Smoke from Dhapa fire, smelting activities chokes Bypass residents
Times of India | 11 April 2025
Kolkata: Residents living in upscale condominium projects near JW Marriott and Tangra off Bypass are unable to open their windows — in apartments costing over Rs 1.5 crore — to prevent thick acrid smoke from a fire raging in the garbage dump yard in Dhapa, as well as smelting activities in the neighbourhood, from engulfing their homes.
"I was among the first to move into the apartment complex 15 years ago, the key attractions of the complex being its convenient location and a view of the vast greenery of East Kolkata Wetlands. We never envisaged that the dumping ground at Dhapa would emerge as a major problem. The fire raging there emits plumes of smoke that blow into our homes, making it difficult to breathe," said Ashok Baid, who lives in Silver Spring.
Sanjay Singh Rathor from the same condominium said residents face the double whammy of a fire at Dhapa, and scrap collectors residing behind the complex burning insulation of cables and wires. "A couple of days ago, the smelting activity ignited a fire in the field behind us. The smoke that engulfs our homes causes not just pollution but respiratory problems as well," he said.
Vineet Vaid from Altius, Tangra, said the smoke enters through the gap in the window even if they are shut. "There is the fire at Dhapa and then there is the scrap godown next to our building. We wake up to toxic air," he said.
While the fire sparked by such scrap extraction activities is a major irritant, the one burning at Dhapa has become almost uncontrollable. Constantly fed by the methane gas generated within the dump, civic officials acknowledge that tackling the fire is a major challenge. Attempts to douse it through spraying of water have proved ineffective.
During winter, this fire is one of the biggest contributors to Kolkata's spiking air pollution level. Environment experts said the Dhapa fire may be as much a threat to health as stubble burning in Punjab, Haryana, and UP. While stubble burning has a greater geographical impact, the Dhapa fumes contain a far more lethal cocktail of pollutants because of the vast range of waste materials that burn in this open-air incinerator throughout the year.
Fish farm workers and ragpickers living on the edges of Dhapa say they saw smoke emerging from the dump for the first time in 2013. But the footprint of the fire has increased over the years, with the smoke getting denser and more acrid.
West Bengal Pollution Control Board, which funded the green-capping of the earlier garbage hillock at Dhapa, made it clear that biomining is the only feasible solution for trapping and reusing the methane trapped inside the mounds at landfill sites. "The decentralised garbage processing and material retrieval point at each ward and segregation of waste at source are keys to sustainable garbage management. Landfill sites are obsolete and primitive management methods we must stop," said a WBPCB officer.