Not in my (Indian) back yard

In a developing country such as India as in the developed world led by the United States, people’s responses to certain issues are the same.

Take the “not in my back yard” or NIMBY syndrome, a phrase I learned only this week. This, I believe, is a universal trait.

There can be little comparison between Grand Forks and New Delhi, India, for the simple reason that just more than 50,000 people live here compared with 14 million there. But when it comes to mounting garbage problems – which both cities now are facing – bureaucratic action plans and citizens’ reactions are almost the same.

In both places, city planners prepared much in advance and identified landfills to dispose of the garbage. But more than a decade later, neither New Delhi nor Grand Forks have been able to complete their projects.

Grand Forks seems to be the luckier, as its current landfill still has two years left. This is not the case with Delhi, as all four landfills there have outlived their lives. Still, the city has no other options; it continues to dump garbage – a whopping 1.7 million pounds a day – at the present site, which should have been closed few years ago. This violates all environmental norms.

The problem is explained by the stiff resistance the Municipal Corp. of Delhi faces every time it identifies a new landfill site. Be they within the city limits or outside, citizens living in the area and environmentalists vehemently oppose the project. Then, people start agitating, and environmentalists take the government to court.

As a result, the city had to abandon about half a dozen landfill sites in the past decade. Consequently, the existing landfills gain new height every day, at times touching the electric lines of the power grid transmission towers.

For its part, Grand Forks has been planning for more than a decade to develop its new landfill, which the city hopes to build in nearby Turtle River Township. But the citizens response there is the same: They’re ready to do anything to keep a landfill out of their back yards.

In Dehli and in Manvel, N.D., the arguments are the same: “It would make our life miserable.” “Why should my locality be used for dumping the whole city’s garbage?” “This would destroy the environment. It would pollute the groundwater.”

And in both cities, people say “the process was undemocratic.” Residents’ views were not taken into account before identifying the landfill, the residents all say.

As for the landfill supporters, their responses mirror each other, too. “We do not have other economically viable options.” “We invited public opinion.” “The process has been transparent and democratic norms adhered to.”

And “this is going to be a modern landfill.” It will have minimal adverse impact on the environment.”

Besides, “there is no question of ground water pollution.”

Also in both cities, officials emphasize the recycling of solid waste, as they believe this would reduce the need for a landfill.

Let’s hope it does, because otherwise, New Dehli by 2030 could require a landfill the size of a city of half a million people.

I hope America again takes the lead in finding a global solution to this problem. As Rebecca Bischoff of Grand Forks Central High School wrote on a recent Teen Page, “My vision for America is a place where we would not need new landfills, maybe even a place where the number of landfills would be reduced”.