Garbage solutions

The garbage disposal problems of urban Kathmandu Valley are gargantuan. But now there is light at the end of the Chovar tunnel via Okharpauwa. And about time too. A capital city, which can throw itself into a frenzy of face lifting to look its very best as the SAARC summit host with the most, has long been pinching its own nose at the mountains of garbage that waylay the denizens at every other street corner and once gave the whole country a bad name courtesy Newsweek. Municipal authorities who have been complaining about the lack of enabling legislation to put paid to the perennial problem has displayed surprising resolve (thanks to the emergency?) in trashing a whole city block to improve the ambiance or cutting through the legal and financial tangle to redeem a troublesome triangle astride a main city artery, all in time for the great event. The face lift may be no more than skin deep while the garbage woe goes to the heart of how we live. The Vajrayana Mandala being jumped into existence at the public garden that will replace the demolished houses at Maitighar may not be in keeping with Vajrayana orthodoxy. But no matter. We have seen and are seeing what the second busiest man in government can do when it comes to straightening out the bends, broadening out the narrow and making flowers bloom where once concrete jungle lay. 

If garbage politics does not interfere again, the valley’s garbage gripes will be over for at least a decade once the road leading to the dumping site at Okharpauwa is black-topped. Agreement has been worked out with private firms to turn city waste into useful compost. The 1.5 million people living in the valley churn out 550 metric tons of the stuff every day and 80 percent of this can be converted into fertiliser, another ten percent recycled. The compost manufacturing will take place at Chovar where the facilities of the recently closed down Himal  cement factory come in handy. It is not certain if Chovar is down wind from the rest of the valley but it is certainly down river. Not all valley dwellers may be able  to take a breath of equally fresh air once the fertiliser works and the rest of the garbage disposal regime is in place. But they can at least take a sigh of relief on  more counts than one. One, they will have slain the garbage dragon that has  been breathing down at them malodorously for so long. Two, they will have shown that, yes this valley, and perhaps the country too, is certainly capable of taking care of its own waste. And maybe the same thing goes for all the other problems which we have heaps of at almost every other street corner.