New Proposals Could Solve Bahamas' Waste Disposal and Energy Woes

by Larry Smith

The biggest problem with garbage is that it never really goes away.

And dump sites are a huge threat both to the environment and to human health - as we have seen with the recent toxic fires at the Harrold Road landfill.

This is not the first time the dump has been on fire since it opened in 1972. It happens quite regularly, and each time there are more people living in the area who are affected. The fumes contain dangerous chemicals like mercury and dioxin.

The dump covers about a hundred acres, and there are two main disposal sites - known as cells. One is for household garbage and one for construction and demolition waste. Both waste streams include toxic materials like used oil, batteries, pesticides, paints, solvents and their containers.

Currently, the household garbage cell rises a hundred or more feet in the air, and a new cell is being prepared to replace it. Huge quantities of used tyres are piled up in a separate area, and the site also features millions of dollars worth of derelict shredding and compacting equipment that hasn't worked in decades.

Decomposition of the waste - especially in the construction and demolition cell - produces large amounts of gas which burns uncontrollably beneath the surface if it is not collected or vented. Considering the perenial fires, it is clear that the dump is not being properly managed by government.

Ten years ago the Inter-American Development Bank financed a $33 million programme to remediate the country's chronic waste management problems. At that time, we were producing more than a quarter of a million tons of garbage annually, with New Providence contributing about three quarters of that total. It is estimated at over 300,000 tons today.

Back then the garbage was simply dumped and spread out by bulldozers. Out island communities burned their garbage in the open to make room for more. To improve this system, the IADB proposed new sanitary landfills at selected sites around the country, each with an expected lifespan of 20 years. Only a handful of these have been completed.

In Nassau, the new landfill at Harrold Road was lined to prevent contamination of the water table and a venting system was supposed to have been included to avoid gas buildup. A shredder for garden waste was also planned (but never installed) and scavengers were to be excluded from the site (an almost impossible task, observers say).

The plan was to implement a gradual privatisation of residential garbage collection, with the Department of Environmental Health continuing to play a supervisory and regulatory role. But that never happened, and the government continues to spend millions of tax dollars on new garbage trucks every few years.

For example, despite the fact that the new FNM administration asked private companies to bid on a pilot contract for residential garbage collection last year, the Ministry of Health recently spent $2.5 million on 10 new trucks. Firms like Bahamas Waste, United Sanitation, Impac and Waste-Not currently handle most commercial garbage collection on New Providence.

In 1998 the IADB decided not to recommend the incineration of solid waste here because of the high costs and the fact that landfills would still be required to dispose of the residue. Burning garbage produces acid gases and toxic chemicals that must be treated with expensive air pollution control equipment.

But with oil prices skyrocketing there is new interest in killing two birds with one stone - by treating garbage as a valuable resource. Hundreds of waste-to-energy plants are already operating worldwide and hundreds more are planned.

Experts see waste-to-energy facilities as the only viable large-scale alternative to landfills. And in a small island state like the Bahamas, the ability to generate electricity from our waste stream is a major bonus. An even greater bonus would be removing waste disposal from the national budget.

Historically, many communities just incinerated their trash, and then disposed of the 30 per cent residue in a landfill. But modern plants first recover reusable materials and then produce electricity by burning garbage as well as captured landfill gas, leaving virtually no residue.

Tough Call can confirm that at least two proposals are on the table to provide multi-million-dollar waste-to-energy facilities in the Bahamas. Both essentially call for the government privatise solid waste management, and promise huge benefits in terms of both waste disposal and power generation.

Both proposals estimate capital costs of about $50 million and operating costs of $25 million. And both would seek to integrate local waste disposal firms into some form of public-private partnership.

Innviron is a Florida-based firm with a long history in the field. It manages more than 40 solid waste facilities worldwide, including landfills, compost plants and recycling operations. Innviron wants to set up a new landfill on Grand Bahama, provide sorting facilities and compost plants at several locations and generate power on New Providence by producing biodiesel and capturing landfill gas.

It proposes a joint venture with the government and local partners, but would provide 100 per cent financing for all facilities.

Meanwhile, a local group called Bahamas Renewable Energy Resources (led by Waste-Not Ltd's Ginny McKinney) is proposing to generate thousands of megawatt hours of electricity by a process that will capture landfill gas and convert most solid waste to energy, leaving a residual non-toxic slag that can be used in road-building and block-making.

BRER proposes an alliance of local waste disposal firms with a foreign partner and would also provide 100 per cent financing for all facilities.

Both proposals promise to reduce our reliance on costly fossil fuels while getting a handle on our critical solid waste problem.

Comments

[Oscar El Groucho]

Also sometimes gas does not catch fire and is not vented. It just sits under the trash creating a (sort of) sterile environment where decomposition no longer occurs.

I wouldn't be surprised to find newspapers from the 70's that still look as good as the day they were thrown away.

[Shelley Martin]

I am curious to know the status of the not yet completed sanitary landfills and what are the resulting health risks associated with the toxic exposures.

[Tim Roberts]

I would love to see these waste-to-energy plants built and put to use, but, somehow the pessimist in me rises up to say, 'the government has always been lax on environmental things, why will they change now. It's all just frivolous banter and makes them feel like they are concerned while doing nothing about it."

My hopeful side thinks that environmental pressures from the rest of the world may actually spur some of this into reality.

What is also long overdue is recycling in the Bahamas. There is also good money in recycling as well.

For a country that relies so much on our history and environment for our economic stability, we are very careless with it, and don't take the care we should of it.

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