Monsoon slows Delhi landfill cleanup, threatens biomining deadlines

Delhi is a very big city in India that has been piling up its garbage for decades in three giant dumps called landfills.

One of these dumps, Ghazipur, has grown into a mountain about 65 metres tall.

To clean up the old garbage, the city uses machines called trommels — big rotating drums with holes that sort the rubbish.

But heavy monsoon rain recently fell on Delhi, making the old garbage very wet.

Wet garbage sticks together and gets stuck inside the machines, so workers must stop and clean them again and again.

Because of this, each day the machines can process much less old garbage than before the rain.

For example, at the Okhla dump, daily processing fell from thousands of tonnes to only about 650 tonnes.

Meanwhile, fresh garbage keeps arriving every day, so the piles stay big while cleanup moves slowly.

The city wants to clear two of the dumps by December, and the rain could make that deadline very hard to meet.

Companies hired to do the cleanup may be fined if they miss their deadlines.