The Landfill That Ate A Wetland In Kashmir

In Srinagar’s Syedabad Colony, families eat dinner with their windows shut tight. The acrid stench of a garbage mountain nearby seeps through curtains and fans, turning everyday life into a battle against foul air. The Achan landfill, once part of a wetland system, adjacent to Anchar lake has, since 1986, become Kashmir’s largest dumping ground — a 123-acre landfill that now holds more than a million tonnes of untreated waste, buzzing with flies, slick with leachate, and crowned with circling crows.

Locals recall a different time. Until the early 1990s, the area was farmland and wetlands with paddy cultivated here for centuries. Now, residents of Soura, Nowshahra, Hawal, and Eidgah say the stench is unbearable, especially in the summer heat or after rain when the odour intensifies.

Bashir Ahmad, who moved to Achan in search of a better life, says the decision has cost him his health. Diagnosed with asthma, he struggles to breathe in the polluted air. “My lungs are damaged,” he says. “My children are never well. Most of our earnings go into buying medicines.” Others echo the same despair. “We have stopped sitting outdoors, and inviting guests, too, has become awkward,” says Fayaz Ahmad. “Many families want to relocate, but no one is willing to buy properties in the area.” Residents also speak of stigma, as marriage proposals are often rejected because people do not want to be associated with “the colony beside the dump”.

Toxic leachate threatens Srinagar’s wetlands

The Achan waste management facility manages nearly 550 tonnes of Srinagar’s waste every day. Landfills are the most affordable and widely used method of waste management in many parts of the world. However, in most developing nations, including India, improper management leads to hazardous leachate — a toxic, foul-smelling liquid — seeping into soil and groundwater. This is endangering Anchar lake, Khushal sar, Gil sar, and even the Shallabugh wetland, a Ramsar site meant to be protected under the international convention.

A National Green Tribunal (NGT) report noted the leachate treatment plant at Achan was “non-functional,” with toxic discharge flowing into Anchar Lake. The Jammu and Kashmir Pollution Control Committee also flagged untreated leachate contaminating groundwater and wetlands, including the ecologically fragile Anchar and Dal lakes.

A silent health emergency

Studies also point to a lack of proper waste segregation, insufficient and poorly trained manpower, and inadequate equipment for proper compaction and soil covering, hindering effective management. A 2022 study confirmed elevated methane gas concentrations at the Achan landfill, with health experts warning that prolonged exposure to landfill gases can pose serious health threats.

Dr. Fiaz Maqbool Fazili, a surgeon and healthcare policy analyst, describes Achan landfill as a “silent health emergency”, adding that residents within a five-kilometre radius are reporting alarming cases of asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), and nocturnal respiratory distress.

As part of the Group of Concerned Citizens (GCC), Dr. Fazili submitted a detailed representation to the J&K Legislative Assembly House Committee on Environment in July. Drawing from over 25 research papers and expert reports, the GCC highlighted that methane levels at Achan are nearly 14% of the gases measured at the landfill, while hydrogen sulfide breaches 20 parts per million (ppm) — double the danger threshold. This indicates a serious risk of respiratory illness for people living nearby.

“Forty percent of respiratory and gastrointestinal cases at SMHS Hospital are from areas near Achan,” Dr. Fazili adds. “Children in the locality show 400% higher asthma rates.” He adds that toxic emissions from the site are linked to rising cases of cancer, infertility, respiratory illness, and allergies. “Waste pickers and Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) workers are also suffering skin lesions and chronic lung damage.”

He also adds that no official survey has been done on diseases or air quality around Achan. “Srinagar is breathing poison,” he warned, as GCC urged gas-level checks, air monitoring, safety drills, and quick fixes like biofilters and real-time alerts.

The Jammu and Kashmir Civil Society (JKCS) also called the situation “unbearable and life-threatening, an escalating environmental and humanitarian crisis.”

Court orders and promises fail to resolve landfill crisis

Experts say that systemic failures have prolonged the crisis. Despite a 2007 court order to close the site and repeated protests by residents, the landfill continues to operate. The matter is now before the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

In December last year, the SMC Commissioner had assured NGT that the Leachate Treatment Plant would be made operational and the foul odour be controlled by June 2025. In March 2025, the tribunal imposed an environmental compensation of ₹120 million (₹12 crores) on the Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) and initiated penal action against eight former commissioners who held office between 2017 and 2025.

At a hearing, the NGT directed then SMC Commissioner Owais Ahmad, to submit a written undertaking within 10 days, committing to the complete removal of the waste by March 2027. The Commissioner was transferred in June 2025.

Environmental activist Raja Muzaffar Bhat, who brought the case to India’s top green court questions official apathy.

“In December 2024, the NGT, on my application, directed the SMC Commissioner to file a detailed and time-bound remediation plan,” Bhat says. “The SMC complied, promising, in an affidavit, to operationalise the leachate treatment facility between January and June 2025 and to tackle the pervasive odour with bio-enzymes and anti-odour chemicals. As of September, none of this work has started.

Questioning the location of the landfill, Bhat told Mongabay India that urban planners should not have chosen a wetland area, with a large number of paddy fields, as a garbage dumping site.

“Saidapora Achan in Srinagar city was once known as the rice-bowl of Srinagar,” he says. “Until the early 1990s, this urban village had lush paddy fields, vegetable farms, and a thriving wetland system.” He adds that the landscape began to change in the late 1980s when the SMC started dumping municipal solid waste here.

When asked about the city’s inability to enforce India’s solid waste laws, Bhat points to systemic failures, “The biggest lapses in implementing Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, and Swachh Bharat Mission in Srinagar are glaring,” he says. “Waste segregation at source never took off. In-house composting of biodegradable waste was ignored. Instead, SMC continued unscientific dumping at Achan, right in a wetland.”

He alleges that initial attempts to involve citizens collapsed due to corruption. “SMC hired NGOs as Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) partners to create awareness and train people in segregating waste at source,” he adds. “For about a year, it worked — households started separating wet and dry waste. But then everything fell apart.” he said. “The segregated waste was being mixed again in trucks headed to Achan. In addition, ward officers and sanitation officials demanded bribes from these NGOs when they submitted their bills. The programme was marred by corruption, and eventually collapsed.”

A 2022 study flagged poor governance and inadequate infrastructures for waste collection, transportation and management as major constraints in developing an effective Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management plan for the city.

“The old legacy waste should be processed, biomined, and remediated,” Bhat says. “But the landfill, as it exists, cannot continue. New scientifically designed waste processing sites must be identified for Srinagar.” He warns that the crisis extends beyond Achan, “Even today, in Srinagar’s uptown areas, waste is being dumped unscientifically by people and even SMC sanitation staff on the Nowgam–Lasjan bypass,” he adds. “We are destroying wetlands one after the other.”

SMC’s Solid Waste Management Officer, Mujeeb-ul-Najeeb, admitted that the corporation is struggling with waste segregation at the source. “At present, waste pickers are doing the segregation at the landfill itself,” he says.

However, the officer expressed hope for improvement in the coming months. “A biomining project has been initiated by the SMC. The machinery is already in place, and the present Commissioner, Fazl-ul-Haseeb, is personally overseeing the progress. We will see visible changes in the coming months,” Najeeb says.

He adds that steps are also being taken to control the stench emanating from the Achan landfill. “To prevent odour at the dumping site, we are spraying chemicals several times a day,” he says.

(Published under Creative Commons from Mongabay India)