Long-awaited landfill opens

A Puran Brothers garbage truck was the first to unload at the Haags Bosch Sanitary Landfill yesterday, marking the official opening of the site as well as the long-awaited closure of the Le Repentir Landfill.

Ten percent of cell one at Haags Bosch, East Bank  was opened yesterday morning and Local Government Minister Kellawan Lall said that the cell is expected to last some 10 to 20 years. “Today we’re doing kind of a dry run… within a few days, we will be fully operational. We have closed the La Repentir dumpsite and all the waste will be coming from Georgetown, will be coming here,” Lall said in a brief address to the media.

After being in operation for many years, the Le Repentir landfill has finally been closed.

Haags Bosch is designed to take in the waste of the entire Region Four, from Soesdyke to Mahaica.

Walter Willis, Project Manager for the new landfill, said yesterday that garbage can be brought to the new site by private persons, contractors, the NDCs or the municipality. “What is happening is the contractor is paid per tonne for handling all the garbage brought here. It is weighed and it is checked both by the contractor and the ministry of local government representative and signed off and then the contractor will be paid when he sends in his monthly invoice on the rate of garbage that he handled here,” Willis explained.

Garbage trucks waiting to unload their collection at Haags Bosch yesterday.

There will be no tipping fee charged at the new landfill until further notice.

According to Willis, contractors who use the site will have to ensure that the garbage is properly disposed of, in a manner prescribed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In November 2009, a $9,729,822 contract was awarded to BK International in association with Puran Brothers Disposal Service for the construction of the landfill. The site is expected to have an operational period of 10 years. There will be four cells constructed at Haags Bosch and each cell will occupy 16 acres of land. “What you are seeing here is 10% of cell one and we will continually expand to the south and the north and also to the west to occupy 16 acres…we envisage that it will take us about ten years to full capacity of cell one and we have four cells,” said Willis.

The first load of garbage being dumped in the newly opened cell at Haags Bosch.

The site will be secured by the contractors. Willis added that there will be no litter pickers at Haags Bosch. “The picking will be done by the operators themselves. He will recruit from the stock of waste pickers,” he noted.

Addressing any potential fire outbreak at the new site, Willis said, “The contractor in the civil works contracts has to provide the fire pumps to pump from the storm water drains to fight any fire.”

Closed

Meanwhile, the gates to the Le Repentir dump have closed after 17 years of operations. The site was initially projected to have a two-year lifespan since its opening in 1993. For the past few years, the dump gradually encroached on cemetery grounds as it overflowed.

Several trucks found themselves stuck in the pit while offloading garbage yesterday at the now-opened Haags Bosch Sanitary Landfill.

The site has also been plagued by outbreaks of fires, with the most recent being two weeks ago.

In 2008, cell two of Le Repentir was closed while a contract was awarded for the closure of cell three in 2009. However, the closure had to be put on hold to prevent the landfill from covering the tombs nearby. “Now that it (the landfill) is completely closed, we will go back to the IDB in order to have the funds which are part of the loan agreement to completely close cell three,” said Willis.

As garbage is offloaded at Haags Bosch, draglines are deployed to keep it from getting out of control.

According to Minster Lall, all “unauthorised persons” will be removed from the landfill. He also noted that “the central government assistance at that site will continue until we can clear all the garbage around that dump site, put [it] in the cell and close it.” He added that the area will be given a “face-lift” after the landfill is fully closed. It is expected that it will take about six months to close the landfill.

Residents of communities near to the landfill have been besieged for years by the odour and smoke from the garbage. Numerous objections had been raised over the years but the use of the city landfill continued. For a number of years financial assistance was sought to close the landfill and to move to a new location. The move to Haags Bosch itself was littered with delays and initial objections from residents in the area.

The Haags Bosch landfill is part of the Georgetown Solid Waste Management Programme.

The first cell at the Haags Bosch landfill sanitary facility.

In 2007 a loan amounting to US$18.07M was signed between the Government of Guyana and the IDB for the project. In the 2008  budget, $3.687M was made available to the Local Government Ministry for the construction of the landfill site at Haags Bosch.

The project includes provisions for institutional strengthening and capacity building, public awareness and community participation of the Neighbourhood Democratic Councils and treatment and disposal of healthcare and hazardous waste.  The Haags Bosch landfill was also intended tol make provisions for the trapping of fire-causing methane gas and was to be designed to ensure that no foul odour emanates from the site.