1 week Ago
Just weeks after the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) set up a bamboo park and planted thousands of saplings on the five-acre reclaimed site near the Bhalswa landfill, most of these saplings have dried up with the rising temperature in the city. The bamboo saplings were planted with a goal to turn the erstwhile garbage dumpsite area into a lush garden. During a spot-check by HT, it was found that the stems and leaves of majority of saplings have dried up.
On Monday, two workers from horticulture department were deployed to keep watering the plants which have signs of life left. “We are regularly watering the plants but the condition is very challenging. We are hoping that the roots of the surviving plants will be acclimatised before the harsh summer season.
The soil conditions are also very challenging,” an MCD official, requesting anonymity, said. In March, Delhi LG V K Saxena and CM Rekha Gupta had initiated the project to transform the reclaimed land at Bhalswa dumpsite into a bamboo park with a plan of planting more than 54,000 saplings. Their idea, officials said, was that bamboo grows rapidly and reaches a height of 20 to 25 feet within a year.
A lush bamboo garden could act as a barrier between the waste mound and the national highway with a green landscape visible for commuters. MCD officials did not comment on how many saplings have been planted so far. Notably, the site was cleared by removing legacy waste through biomining process.
Bhalswa landfill is spread over 70 acres and it has been active since 1994. Biomining on the site was started in 2019 and so far, 7.3 million tonne of waste has been cleared from the site with 5 million tonne still pending and expected to be cleared by December 2028.
An MCD official said that 25 acres has been reclaimed and a part of this land was used for plantation. Experts said the soil near the landfill site is not good enough for plantation and it should have been studied prior to setting up the garden. “Mass scale plantations must be done with more research and restraint.
Bamboo needs more water and we have only one native species. Was that the one chosen? Is the soil suitable for it?” Padmavati Dwivedi, an environmentalist and tree expert, said. “The soil near the landfill site is highly degraded and new saplings will require intensive care.
MCD will also have to ensure that the bamboo species — Dendrocalamus strictus which is native to NCR should be planted instead of other species,” another botanist, who did not wish to be named, said. Professor Aslam Parvaiz, former professor of botany and former principal at Zakir Hussain College in Delhi university reiterated that the main concern in this case is the heavily degraded soil. “Despite the top layer, the underlying soil is contaminated with heavy metals and chemicals as unsegregated waste was being thrown here for so many decades,” he explained.
“Plants will need a lot of water and even more care. There is forecast of very harsh summer ahead. Secondly, this is a monoculture.
Mixed plantation of various shrubs and plants would have also helped the plants survive,” professor Parvaiz said..
