Foreign Property News | Posted by Si Thu Aung
India's tallest rubbish mountain is on course to rise higher than the Taj Mahal in the next year, becoming a fetid symbol for what the UN considers the world's most polluted capital.
Hawks and other birds of prey hover around the towering 213ft Ghazipur landfill on the eastern fringe of New Delhi, stray cows, dogs and rats wander at will over the huge expanse of smoking filth.
Taking up the area of more than 40 football pitches, Ghazipur rises by nearly 33ft a year with no end in sight to its foul-smelling growth. At its current rate of growth, it will be taller than the iconic Taj in Agra, some 239ft high.
(India's tallest rubbish mountain, the 213ft Ghazipur landfill in New Delhi (left), is on course to rise higher than the 239ft Taj Mahal (right))
(India's Supreme Court has warned that red warning lights will have to be put on the dump to alert passing jets. Pictured: people stand atop the landfill after a section collapsed in 2017)
Ghazipur was opened in 1984 and reached its capacity in 2002 when it should have been closed. But the city's detritus has kept on arriving each day in hundreds of trucks.
'About 2,000 tonnes of garbage is dumped at Ghazipur each day,' a Delhi municipal official said on condition of anonymity.
In 2018, a section of the hill collapsed in heavy rains killing two people. Dumping was banned after the deaths, but the measure lasted only a few days because authorities could not find an alternative.
Fires, sparked by methane gas coming from the dump, regularly break out and take days to extinguish.
(A recent study said the dump was a health risk for people living within five kilometres (three miles), including for cancer. A man is pictured working at the site as a stray dog scavenges)
(Ghazipur was opened in 1984 and reached its capacity in 2002 when it should have been closed but it remained open despite a collapse of a section that killed two people last year)
(About 2,000 tonnes of garbage is dumped at Ghazipur each day and the height is growing at an alarming rate. The site also poses a serious health risk, a local doctor sees 70 people a day)
(A residential building is pictured next to the Ghazipur landfill site in the east of New Delhi)
(residents walk along a road near the Ghazipur landfill site which constantly looms over them)
