The National Green Tribunal has directed the Greater Chennai Corporation to ensure uninterrupted processing of construction and demolition waste and make compliance with waste-management rules mandatory for building-plan approvals and completion certificates.
The southern bench of the tribunal also ordered the corporation to arrange alternative processing facilities after plants at Kodungaiyur and Perungudi ceased operations in 2024. The directions follow a suo motu case taken up by the tribunal in 2024 after reports that the civic body had identified 25 locations where construction waste was being dumped.
The bench, comprising Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana and Prashant Gargava, said construction waste generators were responsible for managing the waste produced by their projects. It directed the Greater Chennai Corporation to monitor compliance with the Construction and Demolition Waste Management Rules and prevent illegal dumping.
The tribunal specifically said the corporation’s existing guidelines would not be sufficient unless compliance was built into the approval process. “Though GCC has issued guidelines for construction and debris waste management and prevention of illegal dumping, compliance with the prescribed requirements should be made mandatory for building-plan approval,” the bench said, according to the report.
The order also links waste compliance to the final stage of construction projects. Authorities have been directed to issue completion certificates only when projects comply with construction and demolition waste-management rules. This places responsibility on the approval system to check how debris is collected, transported, processed and disposed of before a project is formally certified.
The tribunal’s directions come against the backdrop of interruptions at Chennai’s two construction-waste processing facilities. The report does not specify when the facilities stopped operations or identify the reasons for the shutdowns, but the bench directed the corporation to arrange alternatives to ensure processing does not stop.
Construction and demolition debris can include materials generated during building activity, alteration, repair and demolition. When such waste is not collected and processed through an authorised system, it can be deposited on roadsides, vacant plots, waterways and other public spaces. The tribunal’s reference to 25 dumping hotspots indicates that the issue extends beyond individual building sites and involves the capacity of the city’s waste-management system.
The National Green Tribunal has also assigned a statewide monitoring role to the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board. The board must monitor the collection, transportation, processing and disposal of construction and demolition waste across Tamil Nadu and ensure compliance with the applicable law and guidelines.
For builders and other waste generators, the order makes compliance relevant at two administrative checkpoints: permission to begin construction and certification of project completion. For the Greater Chennai Corporation, it requires continuous processing capacity, alternative arrangements when facilities are unavailable, and monitoring of waste-management obligations. The Pollution Control Board is responsible for oversight across the state.
The tribunal’s directions form part of the suo motu proceedings initiated in 2024. The next implementation steps identified in the order are the corporation’s arrangements for uninterrupted processing, enforcement of compliance during plan approval and completion certification, and statewide monitoring by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board.
