– Mayor
Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green says it is not likely that the city would stop depositing waste at the Mandel dump site within two years.
In an interview with Stabroek News Green said this is because of the controversy surrounding a new site aback Eccles where the municipality was supposed to have begun depositing refuse. He said dealing with the dump is a tremendous challenge and that the city does not have the “technical competence” to handle the matter properly.
Green said he empathises with residents near the Le Repentir Solid Waste Dump-site and recently held a two-day meeting to address the issue. He said the constant fires and subsequent thick smoke is as a result of constant combustion that occurs some 20-30 feet below the dump and there is no technology available locally to address this problem. Green also admitted that asbestos is indeed being disposed of at the dump, but in a “separate cell” and that municipality workers are reluctant to work at the site which is causing the “smoking” to get out of hand.
When this newspaper visited the site last week some Princes Street residents voiced their distress over the situation. At the time the dump was smoking and an excavator was turning up the contents while a man with a hose aided by a Hyundai pump sprayed water in an effort to douse the flames that continued to spring up around the area. On another visit several days later the dump was still smoking. Residents had said that they were “tired and fed up” of dealing with the health hazard. One woman said that she recently went over to the dump and saw asbestos being dumped and burnt there. She said too she saw parts of human feet, which were apparently dumped there after being surgically amputated. The woman told Stabroek News that if she had somewhere else to go she would move without hesitation as the smoke is jeopardising her family’s health. “When a circle breeze blow its horrible…you can feel the smoke and nastiness in yuh stomach.”
Another resident said his wife delivered a baby eight days ago and there is no where else to take the child except to an environment that is unhealthy. He said residents had made several complaints to the Ministry of Health and even tried calling PAHO to no avail. He also showed this newspaper a number of medicine bottles that he has had to buy for his children who continually suffer from one ailment to another.
The problem of the dump alighting is ongoing. Methane gas produced from the waste material combusts fuelling flames that burn underneath the heap. Even when it rains heated material remains under the pile and the flames reignite when the temperatures rise. As regard the gas, Greene said there have been suggestions to drill and run pipes to get out the methane but again the country’s “technical competency” does not allow for this.
