Traffic authorities said several roads in the central and eastern Netherlands were completely or partially blocked by the early morning blockades and fire services rushed to clear roads as traffic built up. Police urged them to stop for safety reasons and were investigating who was responsible. Putting a shed, purchasing machinery for segregation and raising a wall were all part of it,” he says.THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Dutch farmers protested government plans to reduce nitrogen emissions by dumping manure and garbage Wednesday on highways and setting fires alongside roads - the latest actions in a summer of discontent. We submitted a proposal to the Chairperson of the municipality in 2013, and over the years they worked on improving the system. When I moved in, I collected old documents and started my work on developing a campaign. “After the 2008 judgement, people had moved on and there was no follow up on citizens' end. Ready to file a fresh petition in the Madurai bench of the Court this summer, Avijit explains how he approached the issue after he moved to Kodaikanal in 2011. “The piece of land I bought in 2011 is very close to the landfill, and for me, it is a personal project to look at tackling solid waste management at a small town municipality level,” says Michael, who filed numerous RTIs on the subject, met the officials and has now sent a contempt of court notice to the municipal authorities for not following the High Court judgement of 2008. His neighbour, Avijit Michael - an activist - is not taking things lying down.
The produce is less and the fruits also turn out to be tasteless.” Karthik’s family has seen the garbage piling higher and higher over the last 25 years. He says, “The flies keep buzzing all over the fruit trees and the leaves go pale. MRP Karthik, whose land is the buffer zone between the dump and the forest, usually grows carrots, potatoes, garlic and some fruits in his farmland.
They aren’t eating food, they are eating pesticides,” says Dr. “Usually, farmers spray pesticides just three times in a season but farmers around the dump are spraying 17 times in one season i.e., 90 days, because the flies generated at the waste dump are always all over the farms. For them, the problem is not just the dump and its stinking smell but what it attracts: flies.
The local farmers are clearly frustrated too. There are high chances that the groundwater and the soil of the nearby shola forests are contaminated,” says Lekshmi Raveendran, an ecologist who runs the NGO - Society for Ecology, Environment and Community Outreach. “It’s important to assess the water quality of that area, as many hazardous substances like batteries, tubelights, polythene and glass bottles are also seen publicly dispersed. We had asked to allot a piece of land in every ward for waste processing too, but nothing happened,” says Meenakshi, expressing her disappointment. “In those days, land was used to build illegal temples, churches, guesthouses etc. Twenty one years ago, many letters were written by the United Citizens Council of Kodaikanal to the authorities for segregation at source. Instead of song birds and Shola life species, it was filled with hundreds of crows.”
Recalling what motivated her to knock on the gates of the court, Meenakshi says, “I went for a walk one day and was horrified to see what had happened there. After protests by the citizens, the authorities closed that, and without taking any clearance from the forest department, shifted it to the current location in the middle of a Shola forest,” says Meenakshi Subramaniyam, who filed the first writ petition against the municipality in the Madurai bench of Madras High Court, on the behalf of an NGO called Shelter Trust, back in 2001. “Earlier, there was one dump in Shenbaganur, right in the heart of human habitation.
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