By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Nov 23: The Marten dumping ground in Mawlai has exceeded its carrying capacity by alarming proportions, with garbage now rising nearly twice as high as the retaining walls and sliding every few minutes toward the Old Guwahati-Shillong Road, which ultimately drains into the Umiam Lake.
The stretch of road below the landfill is pockmarked with potholes filled with dark, grimy water seeping out of the waste mound. Multiple pipes laid beneath the retaining wall also discharge contaminated water into roadside drains, flowing directly into the lake.
This is not the first time Marten’s waste has reached Umiam. Earlier, when the retaining walls collapsed following heavy rainfall, tonnes of garbage washed straight into the reservoir. The High Court of Meghalaya had intervened then, but residents now fear the issue has again faded from judicial scrutiny even as the lake continues to absorb the city’s waste.
The Shillong Municipal Board (SMB) has been attempting to improve waste management at the Marten dumping site, which has been in use since 1938 and occupies about 18 acres.
Despite new initiatives, including waste processing plants, compost units, and bio-mining, SMB officials admit these efforts cannot extend the life of the landfill because all infrastructure is being built atop decades of old garbage.
“We had to reprocess everything since the entire site is built on old waste,” an SMB official said.
He explained that although the retaining walls were designed to hold back the terraced waste mound, small amounts of garbage still tend to slip down onto the old GS Road during heavy rains. “Whenever this happens, we clear it immediately,” he said.
“Even the waste seen recently is mostly mud mixed with very old garbage, and we are already in the process of removing it,” the official said.
Regarding liquid waste, he said: “We have a leachate treatment plant where all wastewater from Marten is supposed to be taken first, filtered, and released only after proper treatment. The water that is visible on the road likely escaped from old waste deposits that have accumulated over decades around the site.”
Leachate is a toxic liquid that forms when rainwater and decomposing waste mix, creating a cocktail of hazardous chemicals, heavy metals, and organic pollutants. A leachate treatment plant filters wastewater before its release, but water seeping onto the road appears to come from older waste deposits across the site.
The official recounted that Shillong began shifting from open dumping to waste processing after 2003. A compost plant set up in 2003 functioned briefly before being scrapped following a major fire.
Replacement parts had to be sourced from Delhi, Gujarat, and Rajasthan, leading to repair delays of weeks or months. With no segregation at source, the plant regularly choked with mixed waste, forcing SMB to revert to open dumping.
A new 170-tonne-per-day compost plant constructed under an ADB-funded project became operational in 2023. Since then, biodegradable waste is processed at the plant, while non-degradable waste is sorted by rag pickers. The remainder is dumped in the landfill, whose phases were completed in 2017 and 2019, but the absence of segregation at source has caused the landfill to fill rapidly and exacerbated waste overflow during rain.
Waste management indicators have improved over the past two years. In early 2023, only 19% of waste was being processed, with 81% dumped. By July 2025, the trend reversed, with 87% processed and only 13% disposed of. Officials say that with proper segregation at source, landfill disposal could be reduced to less than 3%.
These efforts are aligned with the state’s Zero Waste Policy of 2019 and the Solid Waste Management Rules of 2016, which mandate the remediation of legacy waste.
SMB had earlier identified 1.5 lakh tonnes of legacy waste at Marten. Bio-mining began in 2024, and that amount has already been processed by a company contracted by the Urban Affairs Department. However, continuous dumping between 2018 and 2024 increased the total legacy waste to over 3 lakh tonnes, which is now under bio-mining.
Completion of the process is expected to free a significant portion of the landfill bed.
Further, the official revealed that the compost plant has been producing compost, but cannot yet sell it pending government approval of pricing.
The official said that mixed waste entering the plant generates rejects such as plastics and single-use items, which are baled and sent as refuse-derived fuel to Dalmia Cement for co-processing in cement kilns.
Even with these measures, Marten remains overwhelmed unless strict segregation at source becomes a reality.
