A NATIONAL DISGRACE!

Dec 30, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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A few years ago, residents of Subryanville, a high-end neighbourhood within the capital, filed an injunction against a resident who was undertaking a project that the residents opposed.
The work was halted. This is how the rich operate. They do not hesitate to take legal action. They do not tolerate developments within their communities that are inimical to the best interests of the residents.
There is no way, for example, that a dumpsite, such as the one now threatening to overrun Le Repentir cemetery, would have been encouraged in one of the middle class neighbourhoods in the country.
This would not have been tolerated. Court action would have been filed to stop the dumping of refuse long before it has reached a crisis state.
The rich residents would not just have filed legal action to stop the depositing of garbage in the vicinity of their community; they would have also summoned the Environmental Protection Agency to deem the dumpsite an environmental disaster and a health risk and would have filed for compensatory damages.
A few years ago when it was first announced that a new dumpsite would have been established aback of Eccles at a place called Haags Bosch, there were  huge protests by the residents of that area.
But no legal action was taken. Nevertheless it shows that the rich are not going to sit back and allow the authorities to run roughshod over them. They are going to take legal action to protect their interests.
The poor lack that capacity and often look towards the media and social activists to highlight their concerns. The poor have in the main been abandoned by the political parties who claim to be working class in orientation and so what has developed is an eyesore, an environmental disaster and a health catastrophe.
The now unsightly dumpsite should have been closed a long time ago. Those who administer the site should have done so a long time ago. But the full blame for this disaster does not reside with the statutory authorities responsible for the operation of the dumpsite. This is also a national disaster for which the government should not escape responsibility.
The government should have intervened a long time ago and closed the dumpsite. They should not have allowed the situation to reach the stage that it has. They have to accept some failure, also, because of the delay in the opening of the Haags Bosch dumpsite.
The situation will resolve itself by the end of January when the new facility behind Eccles is opened. This is just over one month away and yet there has been no public orientation programme about the proposed dumpsite and what is to be expected of the public.
It had been previously reported that garbage would have been separated at the new dumpsite. But up to now residents are not being advised of the need to segregate their refuse into biodegradable and non- biodegradable, recyclable and non-recyclable parcels. What this means is that when the new dumpsite comes into stream at the end of January 2011, persons will have to be employed at the dumpsite in order to separate the garbage. This will be highly inefficient process.
What should have long happened is that a few pilot projects should have been operational zed whereby certain areas should have been selected and residents in those areas urged to divide their household refuse into degradable and no degradable refuse. This has not happened and therefore the new dumpsite will commence operations with un-segregated refuse.
The closing of the dumpsite will not immediately bring an end to the environmental threat.
The mountains of garbage will take years to disintegrate, a process that can be hastened with a few large bio- digesters which can break down vegetable waste rapidly using solar technology.
Despite the imminent opening of a new dumpsite, the Mayor and City Council of Georgetown should seek to obtain at least one large digester for each of its markets where a great deal of vegetable waste is generated. This can be a project that would demonstrate environmentally friendly way of degrading waste and at the same time earning some income from the fertilizer that is created in the process.
The dumpsite in Georgetown is a national disgrace. But it is not too late to turn it into something that will make Guyana proud. To do so requires the area to be closed and the hastening of the waste-degrading process.
Who knows when the area is closed and all the waste covered, some rich person may make a bid for the land and create a high end community. With the mad rush by the rich to buy and occupy every conceivable piece of valuable real estate, anything is possible.

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