The Haags Bosch Sanitary Landfill has been receiving an average of 350 tonnes of waste on a daily basis—more than a hundred tonnes over initial expectations—and Project Manager Walter Willis has warned that the situation will shorten the lifespan of the first cell at the facility.
During a tour of the facility last week, aimed at giving the media and solid waste management stakeholders a firsthand look at the facility’s operations, blamed the increase in garbage disposal on the closure of the Mandela dump site and other illegal dump sites.
The Haags Bosch facility is designed to have four cells, each with a life-span of 10 years, to cater for 250 tonnes of waste per day, according to the Government Information Agency (GINA), which said the facility caters for waste from 15 NDCs and Georgetown. Since it opened in February last year, however, it has been receiving waste from any area amounting to more than 350 tonnes per day, though to date only one cell has been completed.
Willis, alarmed at the volume and weight of the waste increases at Haags Bosch, said the lifespan of cell one will decrease to seven or eight years.
Ministry of Local Government Ganga Persaud was quoted by GINA as saying that the ministry will cope with the increase in waste at the site by establishing landfill sites in other regions soon, particularly in Region three. He also said another option could be to open new cells at the site as the space and capacity to do so exists.
Persaud acknowledged that there have been some hiccups at the facility and he said the meeting with stakeholders aimed to “look at those slippages and deficiencies in order to bring workable solutions to see how to close the project at the development stage based on agreement signed between the Government of Guyana and the Inter American Development Bank.”
The civil structures of the facility include a scale house, an administrative building and workshop equipped with a canteen and a picker shed. “The trucks are weighed when they go in and when they have disposed the waste to determine the weight of the waste collected,” Willis said. Following weighing and inspection of the waste at the scale house, the trucks proceed along the access road to the landfill site where the waste is disposed.
Project Manager for contractor BK Intl, Lloyd Stanton, who conducted the tour, said recyclers quickly go through the garbage to see what spoils they can retrieve before the waste is pushed backwards by bulldozers. Willis noted that waste from hospital is sterilised, bagged and wrapped before disposal.
Ministry within the ministry Norman Whittaker, Permanent Secretary Collin Croal, Minister within the Ministry of Finance Juan Edghill, representatives of Brian Tiwari International, which was awarded the contract to build the facility, and the media were invited to the tour, GINA said.
