Residents being canvassed on new Eccles landfill site
Environmental assessment to be done
By Johann Earle
Stabroek News
December 30, 2003
With garbage in the city piling up at a rate of 300 tonnes per day compared to 189 tonnes per day in 1999, residents living near to the new proposed landfill at Eccles are being invited to submit questions they want answered in an En-vironmental Impact Assess-ment (EIA).
The EIA has been deemed necessary by the Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA).
In a notice to the public on December 21, the EPA said that in accordance with the Environmental Protection Act of 1996, the EIA had to be done before the decision to approve or reject the proposed project is taken.
The Mayor and City Council is advertising for a consultant to carry out the assessment. It is also seeking a consultant to design the landfill.
The EPA says members of the public are invited to make written submissions to the EPA setting out the questions they want answered in the EIA. They have 28 days from the date of the notice in which to do this.
An EIA is a study of the potential impacts of a particular project and what the developer plans to do in order to mitigate these impacts. It is done by an independent body which will then pass its findings to the EPA and the Environmental Assessment Board (EAB). And based on these findings, the decision will be made as to whether the project goes ahead or not.
The Mayor and City Council of Georgetown and the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development made the application to the EPA for an Environmental Permit for the construction of the facility. The cost of the landfill is being covered in a US$10M grant that the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is making available.
According to the project summary, solid waste delivered to the Mandela Avenue site has risen significantly from 189 tonnes per day in 1999 to 300 tonnes in 2001/2002. And the reason for the increase is that the site receives waste from sources outside of the Georgetown municipality. These include the Neighbourhood Demo-cratic Councils (NDCs) of Eccles/Ramsburg, Industry/ Plaisance, Better Hope/La Bonne Intention, La Grange/ Nismes and Malgre Tout/ Meer Zorgen. In addition to this, use of the Princes Street incinerator has been restricted to the disposal of hospital waste.
The project summary states that the facility in Eccles would cater for the waste generated by those NDCs. It will be accessed by a road on the southern side of the Eccles housing development. The facility will be sited on 300 acres of land donated by the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO).
The Mandela Avenue site will eventually be phased out.
The Eccles facility is to be constructed east of the existing housing development and industrial site, the summary states. A new north-south road is proposed and once this is constructed, the majority of waste delivery vehicles will be directed to use the new roadway and avoid the Eccles housing development.
The project summary says the landfill will be operated and maintained to ensure that it does not become a nuisance to the surrounding community. It states also that the waste material will be unloaded in a designated area and will be placed in the facility to minimise the exposed working area. All of the waste material will be compacted to ensure that the capacity of the facility is maximised, the summary states.
The facility will be constructed in cells, each of which will have a multimedia liner system, consisting of a re-compacted soil liner and/or flexible membrane liner on the bottom of the landfill. But before the soil liner is constructed, the water table elevation would need to be determined. EPA regulations will be consulted to determine the thickness of the buffer zone between the groundwater level and the bottom of the liner.
The project summary says too that before the installation of various protective layers, soils would be tested in accordance with the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) methods to determine their physical properties such as permeability, moisture content and density, grain size distribution, granular drainage material and chemical compatibility.
A leachate collection system is to be built on the facility and this would collect the leachate or liquid which oozes from compacted garbage. After it is collected, the leachate will be transported off site for safe disposal.
Structures will be constructed to transport water from the site and they will be designed in a way so that sediment-laden runoff caused by the development will be prevented.
Wells will be installed at appropriate locations and depths to yield groundwater samples from any significant zones of saturation below the facility. The purpose of the sample wells is to reflect ground water quality not previously affected by past facility operations. The placement of wells will intersect the groundwater passing the facility.
Speaking to Stabroek News, Director of the Solid Waste Management Unit of the Mayor and City Council, Rufus Lewis said that he was disappointed that people have not changed their culture of littering, even as his unit makes efforts to improve solid waste disposal.