Dump solution no time soon
(CNS): Although Osbourne Bodden, the minister responsible for environment health, has committed to finding a solution to the George Town dump, known as "Mount Trashmore", work on addressing the capital’s unsightly and smelly rubbish heap won’t be starting any time soon. Government will be seeking a public-private partnership with a company that will be willing to wait for returns over two decades. The PPM has promised to address the dump on site through a combination of waste-to-energy and recycling, and the Department of Environmental health (DER) is now working towards a request for tenders. But Bodden said but it would not begin the project until the end of next year or early 2015.
Speaking in the Legislative Assembly during the budget debate, Bodden said the department was working hard to facilitate the waste-management project but he warned that there was "a lot work to do” and government had to work within the Framework for Fiscal Responsibility.
“We have been unable to date to find the proper solution or the right process or the right people,” he admitted, but said it was the foremost problem on his agenda and he was committed to getting the project started, once and for all.
The minister said the government was looking for a private company that was willing to work in partnership with the public sector for some 15-20 years because whoever comes in will need to look long term for a return. He said there needed to be discussions with the Water Authority over the impact on that utility as well as CUC regarding the energy that would be produced from the waste. Bodden said that government had told the Dart Group, the dump’s immediate neighbour, that it would be dealing with the landfill where it is and the developer had offered to do what it could to assist.
Although the dump situation has dragged on for years and the solution looks increasingly costly, the minister vowed to tackle the issue. “I am going to drive this process extremely hard to make sure it is up and going,” he said, so it would be underway by the end of next year or early in 2015.
Until then, he said, DER would be promoting educational programmes about better waste management so that the whole community could do its part to control waste generation. He said that the existing solid waste management system would be reorganised to improve efficiency and reduce risk.
Bodden also promised to address the ongoing garbage collection issue before the end of this month. Government has ordered three new trucks, which are expected to arrive next month, and has budgeted for two more, plus the trucks it can salvage from the existing fleet. So the collection should be back to twice a week before long, he said.
The minister said the existing fleet of very old trucks and the lack of capital investment had led to the trucks being completely worn out.
Category: Politics
Remember Airburners with generators could still be set up at the landfill at no cost to Govt.
and that would lead to a few other projects.
Check Me
Tim
The recycling people on dump road shipped 60 tons off the island this month and spent over 30,000 doing it.
They would of shipped more but it takes more than the efffort of a few.
Please visit them with your old A/C Rims Battery Window frames engines ewaste etc
If your business is recycling thank you.
That said perhaps those service clubs could raise some funds by recycling there own waste.
Easier solution… Split the dump into 60,000 evenly sized portions and give everyone back their share.. Lol # rundown 2013
how about we build a new airport in east end and use the old airport site as a place to remediate mount trashmore.
I like moving the airport and the new waste to energy plant to east end
All those prime airport acres could be redeveloped
Some acres given away to needy people
all the jobs it would create
and best of all the plane that will crash someday may cause less damage
Whose idea was it to put the airport in the middle of town?
If the waste management had to be done ,It might have been a good idea. While I know people were upset at mark and Dwayne .It still could have been a win-win situation.
First if Dart would have bought all the landowners who felt cheated for not knowing or who just wanted to sell to retire. Ken a mere 3000 acres at $30-40,000 per acre. A mere 12 million would have sealed the deal. A drop in the bucket to you and everyone would have been happy. You could have started new business in Bodden Town. Possibly something to win hearts and minds. We love food and drink, dancing ,music. So many things that your research crew could have proposed for that side of the island. We just want to share in the wealth of 7 mile beach.
Zoning changes would be nice for people who want to subdivide or make more quarries. They claim the sea is rising. More marl is needed to bring the land level higher. Unless we think that what they did in New Orleans was a better idea (Soup bowl, city in the bottom). Wow wouldn't it be nice to have some kind of theme and place it in the middle? Maybe something to do with a Pirate theme?
Most of the problem ,was that the property value was going down and everyone who owned land was so furious. So they got together and squashed it. Thats the truth. Heard thru the grapevine the road will go thru from Newlands to Frank Sound. Yea, Property going up , as long as Gov't approves. Then it will take 8 months to get planning approval. Come on people lets try to get things going. Stamp the approvals in one week. Everyone has a B.S. degree it shouldn't take that long.
Why is Ozzie wearing his best white sneakers to stand on the garbage at the dump?
Why don't we sell Dart our debt instead? That should free up plenty of cash to deal with this and many of our other current pressing issues.
Really, I thought it was my job to take care of this.
I started the recycling on this island almost 7 years ago caused all of those others to copy me.
Trained dozens of locals to recycle, shipped millions of pounds of garbage off this island.
Dumped Millions of my dollars into this island.
Ihave all the contacts in the US to do the job.
Told you the way.
and you have the balls to say the stuff you say.
Obviously you misunderstood the implications of CaymanKind. Thanks for the millions but we'll do it our way.
Was the Dart deal not a "public-private partnership"???????
I have a question. Who do I speak to about my broken trash bins that are being dilabreatly thrown back against my garbage holder?? I have to buy 2 new ones every 3 months because the collectors are so inconsiderate. Yes I know it’s not nice work. But it’s a job and it pays. So stop being pissed off with my GARBAGE BINS! Thank you.
I understand the need to review carefully the issue so as to ensure a viable solution as we often rush into things without much thought only to exacerbate the problem. However; while we are working out a solution the dump gets bigger. Why can we not slow down the growth rate of the dump by enacting legislation requiring citizens and businesses to recycle? At a rough estimate, I am able to recycle 50-60% of my rubbish – if the entire island did this we halve the amount we add to the dump. The legislation must be apply to households and businesses (a bit pointless me recycling my 2 beer bottles every day when the local restaurant is throwing away a few thousand every week) and enforced through fines (great – a revenue generating measure for the government!). This does not require much work or time to implement and can be part of future mechanisms to deal with waste in the future. Stop procrastinating and do it!
all stratas should have compost collection bins…which in turn could be used to improve their landscaping…..
Right on 09.01, I often thought the same and get really irritated by those damn gardners who "blow" all that compostible waste into other peoples yards, until such time as the other peoples gardners blow it back. This would be not justa green and healthy solution, but take a lot of unecessary dust and other rubbish out of the air.
Implement mandatory recycling is phase one of the solution. No one has to reinvent the wheel. There is alresdy a residential reclying company operating in Cayman, talk to them. And 15 to 20 years with no profits, will never hapen.
Thank you for noticing there is recycling in cayman
As far as the money goes the local recyclers themselves are not making loads of money but they are making money.
That said waste management does not have to make profit but it needs to not loose much either.
If you want check out this website http://www.345recycling.com
Viable solutions have been presented to CIG for many years only to be delayed due to personal interests and lack of real management skills.
The result is year after year Cayman becomes more toxic. The land and waters around Mount Trashmore are a serious hazard to you health. The water we drink is poluted with the water run off from the dump – look at our cancer rates and ask yourself why can't we just stop what we are doing now and recycle more. Have an efficient reprocessing and recycling plant – they don't smell the dump either.
Why waste years more looking at pie-in-the-sky solutions when we have a real world solution already on the table.
CIG you owe it to the people of the Cayman Islands to make this your top priority!
If we banned the importation of disposable styrofoam containers that would be a good start. However, everybody would say that is picking on Dart.
Without expats the dump would be a quarter of the size it is now.
And, "Just Sayin", the Cayman Islands would still be nothing but thatch rope logwood and mosquitoes.
and uneducated ones
The unfortunate fact is we have more uneducated expats than Caymanians.
I don't mind.
Correct 09.29, excpet that the dump would not be in one place, but on every single beach and road on the island.
Yeah and you would still be wearing wompers, Bo Bo.
That's because without expatriates Caymanians would still have to leave Cayman to find work.
Yes and we would still have fish in our seas.
The entire civilised world is recycling now! What is the problem here?
Er….it's not civilised, it's very backward.
Is that why you had to leave home to come here?
Yes, you are so right. Only someone who has not had to suffer four llittle trash cans and mountains of ever changing rules would ever want to go there. I will never recycle. It is pointless. When we are permitting major economies like China and India to pollute at will our efforts are irrelevant.
It's already here – you just have to get off your keester and participate
Is it me or did the PPM already say that they had feasible solutions on the table to deal with the dump where it is. Just more empty campaign promises to get in the big seat. Now really does anyone actually think a private company is going to come to Cayman and invest nearly 100 million dollars to the fix trash issues of a Nation that constantly renigs on the deals they make or just backs out when it time for them to pony up their end. And who in the world is going to put up all that money knowing the they may or may not see any return for two decades. These guys are either stupid or delusional, or maybe they just think the people are.
Not to take the Dart deal was is and always will be IDIOTIC just because some people are so small minded that they think "not in my backyard" when they don't even know the real facts- speaks heaps abotu the people who live there!
What I want to know is who's that standing on mount-trashmore and why?
Apparently its the cleanest place on Cayman these days.
Seriously, the beaches are getting filthier with rubbish, and the streets I stood the other day in Fosters car park and watched in horror as several Caymanians and 1 foreigner came out with various packets of food/candy/cigarettes and just threw the wrappers on the ground in their haste to fill their fat faces..rubbish bin was not more than 2 yards away. Is anyone surprised that the dump is not sorted out? Nobody gives a shit about the place they live in..its always someone elses problem…suggest everyone watches the "Wall-ee" film, see where that ends up.
Take your trash home and throw it in the rubbish bin for collection. Oh, and I mean in the bin, not in the general vacinity.
The problem with the dump is the same problem with the kind of leadership Cayman has. It stinks! Watch and see nothing getting done while lots of money is spent (given away)on ??? This is government Caymanian style.
Instead of complaining why don't we all just try and fix the problem BEFORE IT GETS ANY WORSE?
Our biggest problem is laziness, can someone please explain the diffiulty to me of having a seperate bag of garbage, specifically for plastic, aluminum and paper?
There are recycling recepticles that are easily accessible to the majority of the island – Fosters WB, Camana Bay, Kirk Market- instead of making the problem worse why don't we just do something for ourselves for once?
I can't be bothered having the hassle of all those trash cans and won't be scouring the island for recycling places to keep a few hippies happy. Sorry you can take your tree hugging elsewhere.
And there is the answer to your question .
Isn't Norway looking for garbage?
Yes Norway is looking for garbage but looking for garbage with ENERGY IN IT…our garbage is old, wet and has no intrinsic energy value….just a giant stinking hill leaking into the North Sound….and it will stay like that until a politician has the strenght and will power to move the bloody thing into a lined location.
Ozzie get on your your knees and beg Dart to do the deal he offered us two years ago, and let's get that stinking dump out of smelling distance of our tourists.
Ozzie stand on your two feet and beg Dart for nothing. We have begged Dart enough for the next hundred years and have zilch to show for it.
And you have trusted your own for the past ten years and have less than nothing to show for it. That should tell how smart you are.
I haven't trusted my own for the past ten years. Unfortunately I've been forced to look on in total disbelief at their complete incompetency in giving our country away to someone who claims to love that country with all their hearts. That should tell how smart you are.
That stinks.
The sooner the Minister realizes that leaving the dump there is a crazy crazy idea, will cost the goverment $50-100M or more to fix and even them it will ultimately not be a long term solution, the quicker we can come to a solution that works. I know he ran in the elections on a "leave da dump where it is" slogan hopefully when he gets all the parameters and information from the inside he will also have the balls to go back to his people and say .."now that I know all the issues….."
We need to look at Cayman as a whole and not as little tiny districts fighting each other. What would hapen if all 20,000 persons in George Town suddenly say to the other districks "Keep your own garbage, dont send it to us"..what then???
I am all for recycling, waste to energy etc but those will not solve the dump's issues where it is….
….The dump is draining leachate into the North Sound each and every day– major, major problem to our number one environmental asset with no solution where it is, ever! It is going into the George Town underground water simultaneously…not good.
…..more than 60-70% of the dump cannot be transfered into energy (its either too wet, too old or too low in stored energy where one would use more energy to burn it that we could get out of it)…in other words we will still have a big dump after all the fancy engineering.
……The dump is full of methane gas which makes to potential of explosions and continuous fires a definite reality and that will certainly not be good for our tourist corridor and capital.
After saying all that, unfortuantely, I am pretty sure the Minister does not have the balls to go against his electorate thus I suspect we are in for one major problem after another with some future government holding a much, much bigger bag…silly parochial politics and small mindness.
Fix the problem now!! please, please for our children and their children…..stop kicking the ball down the road just to get re-elected.
So you say the dump should move and assuming it does then that's fine, but just not in your back yard. Solutions to deal with the issue where it is are equally as costly as starting aim a new site in the long run. My reasoning for this is that current land owners surrounding the dump will undoubtedly become stake holders in the process thoughout it's development and beyond. As such these stake holders will have a positive impact on the future design, construction, operation and maintenance if the facility.
please do not forget WE CANNOT PUT A LINER UNDER THE CURRENT DUMP!! Spend all you want there but it still leaches into to North Sound…end of story.
True.
I hope the Cayman Water Company is testing their borehole water for heavy metals, cadmium, lead etc. I think leachate from the dump could enter these boreholes, that servce as our drinking water.
Testing for bacteria is one thing, but heavy metals are carcinogenic and cannot be allowed to enter the water supply.
Rather run a long length of pipe across the North Sound and draw water from the open ocean, where passing currents keep the water supply naturally clean.
Now that Mr. Bodden has been responsible for waste management for a few months, it's time to man-up and admit the best and most realistic proposal for waste management was already on the table. Do the right thing. Admit you were wrong.
And what solution is that may I ask? Picking the company that finished 5th in the tendering selection. Some of you people at Dart are unbelievable. I suggest implementing a recycling program as a means to limit our trash intake as the first step to resolving this environmental issue.
Ok if you're so smart YOU deal with it- oh wait, you can't… no money, no brains… that's right… Ok Mr Dart, sorry we keep pissing you off, please help!
Okay ass, the CTC selected Wheelabrator Ltd which was dropped by CIG for whatever reason. Not entirely sure why you're apologizing to DART as he knew where the dump was located prior to purchasing the land. Why people seem to forget this is beyond me.
Here's the kicker DART LTD creates styrofoam which contains polystrene. How long does stryofoam take to decompose? Answer, polystrene takes hundreds of years to decompose. How about having one the largest distributors of stryofoam implement the recycyling program already utilized in other countries here in Cayman to reduce trash accumulation as a start?
Leaching, leaching, leaching into the North Sound…DART only came last in tender because they offered an ALTERNATIVE solution….if you do not offer a specific solution to a tender you will come in last…but that does not say that their solution was not the best submitted….just they could not get more points as they did not directly respond to the tender request to keep it where it is.
You can recycle all day long…. we have a 100 foot high pile of junk leaking into the north sound…but recycling is not going to solve that 'little' problem…no sir!!!
We are missing put on a major opportunity here. Give it a couple thousand years and our man made hill could be designated a World Heritage site too!!!
Oh, so typical. Another fantasyland solution. Some foreign investor not named Dart is going to miraculously appear and be willing to wait for a return on investment of 15-20 years on an island that abhors foreigners, especially foreign investors, where crime is escalating out of control, where the economy is floundering and will continue to flounder under weak governments that are chasing more and more human capital to competing jurisdictions. Yeah, right. Fairies wear boots, Ozzie, fairies wear boots.
To:Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 21/10/2013 – 10:52. You refer to Cayman "as an island that abhors foreigners, especially foreign investors";what a mean and destructive statement.Do you really need to put down Cayman and it's people ,just to make your point?.Mean,real mean.
Sometimes the truth hurts, doesn't it?
Although you might see that post as mean, it kinda rings true. I guess it's a stretch to say the island abhors foreigners, when only half of the island really abhors foreigners, but it's hard to argue with the statement that Cayman abhors foreign investors if you look at recent history. Bottom line is if I were a foreign investor, I would think twice about investing here now, especially if the return on investment were long term. I'm sorry if the truth hurts, but that's the way it is right now.
There is someone else, check out plasma gasification.
THIS is no SURPRISE
The PPM is doing what it has always done and that is nothing and piling it up. I knew it was only a campaign promise to the many fools that listened and voted them in. They will do nothing to the dump it will continue until some government get in and say enough is enough and we are going to put the dump X spot on the Island as it is a farce to believe we will ever be in a position to deal the dump in it’s current location.
All we will hear during this administration is things that benefit every one who is not Caymanian. I leave them to Ezzard and Arden they will whip them in shape.
Ossie is talking pure rubbish. Why not use the same RFP criteria and this time allow the process to take its course without the usual government interference?
Or they could have started the process of putting it in the site in the district of Bodden Town, which was a much better idea.