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We are sitting on an environmental time bomb

Mar 07, 2012 Letters

 

 

 

Dear Editor,
We, in Guyana, are sitting on an environmental time bomb at Haags Bosch Landfill. The Inter-American Development Bank and the City Council ought to be very worried at a crude facility passed off to Guyanese as a technically sound landfill operation. The situation needs to be arrested now!
As I know it, landfill is the deposition of waste in a specially designated area, which in modern sites consists of a pre-constructed ‘cell’ lined with an impermeable layer (man-made or natural) and with controls to minimize emissions. Clearly, this is not being done at that landfill site.
This raises questions about who is really in charge of that facility and what experience and qualifications they have in managing landfill operations.
I recently visited that site and was terrified by the high risk situation there. A number of things are visibly wrong.
First, application of daily cover appears to be a significant issue; daily cover is not been applied. This has resulted in a proliferation of flies and other vermin, which carry certain diseases. If this is not corrected the health of the residents living in areas contiguous to that site would be seriously compromised. Public health research has shown a correlation between such kinds of crude open dumping and certain adverse health conditions.
Secondly, there is an evident lack of modern operating equipment. The ones on site seem to be old, with several mechanical defects. As a result, much time and money is wasted and the environmental processes involved in degeneration of the waste, at the site, are affected.
Thirdly, there is an army of apparently unregulated, unmonitored litter-pickers. No one knows for sure what is happening to the garbage they are recycling and reusing.
Then what about the buffer zone? Who authorized it? That too seems to have been compromised and consequently, the health of neighbouring communities.
It seems to me that what we have at that landfill site is an open dump approach. It involves indiscriminate disposal of waste and limited measures to control operations, including those related to the environmental effects of the landfill.
As a result, the environmental impact and economic damage of poor leachate management practice on groundwater and receiving surface waters are not clearly understood. Perhaps, this accounts for the absence of adequate measures to deal with leachate at the site.

A sanitary landfill involves appropriate attention to all technical aspects of landfill development: siting, design, operation, and long-term environmental impacts.
However, what is happening there is worse than what was operated by the city council at Le Repentir Cemetery. In fact, I wonder why, in the first place, the landfill is being controlled by the Ministry and not the Council. The municipality has had decades of experience and the skills, technical and otherwise in dealing with landfill operations.
Perhaps, it would be a good thing if representatives of the Inter-American Development Bank, the media, health authorities, the city council and community leaders, visit and see the sorry state of this operation run by the government of Guyana.
Concerned citizen

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