| Provo, Grand Turk dumps to be cleaned up | | Print | |
| Written by Richard Green/richard@fptci.com | |||
| Monday, 02 April 2012 15:48 | |||
 After years of delays, the public dumps on Providenciales and Grand Turk will finally be cleaned up and run as secure, more environmentally safe facilities to handle an estimated 50,000 tons of garbage a year. Turks and Caicos Environmental Management Ltd. (TCEM) began work April 2 on Providenciales and will begin on Grand Turk in 2-3 weeks. The company will take about six months to consolidate garbage on the 66-acre Provo site and 35-acre Grand Turk site, then compact and cover the garbage with a foot of soil, TCEM President Tim Hodge told the fp. Then only a small part of the dumps will be used for daily dumping, and garbage will be covered with 6 inches of dirt at the end of each day to minimize odor, noise and scavenging. The biggest health problem that will be solved will be stopping scavengers from burning the plastic off copper wire, which emits toxic smoke, Hodge said. “This is a major achievement for the government and critical for the protection of human health and the environment,” said Judith Campbell, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health and Human Services. “This was clearly an unhealthy situation, and if one person is prevented from carbon monoxide poisoning and cancer from dump pollutants, then the investment in this project is well worth it.” TCEM won the contract in 2008 to create a state of the art lined landfill on Provo to handle solid waste from all other islands and to manage the country’s collection services. Nothing happened until the interim government decided to go forward with the plan in 2010, but that had to be greatly scaled back because of lagging government revenue. Unlike the original plan, the two dumps will not be lined, but they will be graded to handle water runoff to eliminate standing water and to minimize groundwater impacts, which will be monitored. Other benefits will be fewer rodents, birds and feral dogs that can carry disease. While managing the dumps, TCEM staff will weigh and monitor what comes into the dump and segregate any potentially hazardous items for safe handling. Photo: Grand Turk landfill
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