Kali­fa Clyne

Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment CEO Dr Stephen Ram­roop yes­ter­day came un­der fire from en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists for say­ing burn­ing rub­bish, in­clud­ing plas­tic, in back yards could pro­duce sim­i­lar lev­els of air pol­lu­tion to the lev­els cur­rent­ly be­ing emit­ted by Beetham land­fill smoke.Ram­roop made the com­ment dur­ing an in­ter-agency press con­fer­ence at the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain, as he said peo­ple were pan­ick­ing un­nec­es­sar­i­ly be­cause the sit­u­a­tion at the Beetham land­fill was not a dis­as­ter, even as smoke from the land­fill con­tin­ued to cov­er the cap­i­tal in a cloud of tox­ic fumes which forced the shut­down of schools, busi­ness and gov­ern­ment of­fices for a fourth straight day."When we light our fires there are more tox­ins than SWM­COL (Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny), be­cause they have been do­ing a mar­vel­lous job," Ram­roop said at the press con­fer­ence."A dis­as­ter is when peo­ple are af­fect­ed, liveli­hoods are af­fect­ed or peo­ple are in­jured. This is an en­vi­ron­men­tal haz­ard that has im­pact­ed com­mu­ni­ties."

He said to a large ex­tent, peo­ple's lives had not been af­fect­ed.En­vi­ron­men­tal­ists, how­ev­er, took is­sue with those state­ments.Stephen Broad­bridge, of the en­vi­ron­men­tal group Pa­pa Bois Con­ser­va­tion, de­scribed them as "scary" and "ig­no­rant.""We are sur­round­ed with pol­lu­tion...I don't know what the health in the coun­try will be like in the fu­ture," Broad­bridge said.He said he felt the fire at the Beetham land­fill was a wake-up call."Some­times hu­man be­ings need to feel the ef­fects be­fore things hap­pen," he said."Burn­ing garbage in back­yards is a prob­lem, but how can you com­pare that to the tox­ins com­ing from the Beetham? The fact that he feels that way is the scari­est thing."Broad­bridge said there should not even be a land­fill at the site be­cause the Gov­ern­ment should know bet­ter."The rest of the world is re­cy­cling; we are cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­men­tal prob­lem. Every­thing in that dump has val­ue, every­thing can make mon­ey. We are so be­hind."

Broad­bridge al­so raised the ques­tion of what ma­te­ri­als were be­ing placed in the dump."Who reg­u­lates what goes in? What about haz­ardous waste?"We do not even know what is in the fumes. We don't know what is be­ing in­haled."

En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Marc de Ver­teuil, al­so of Pa­pa Bois, said the prob­lem of the pol­lu­tion from the site was decades old."It is not a new prob­lem but it is a dan­ger­ous mat­ter," he said.De Ver­teuil al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the in­for­ma­tion re­leased so far by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA)."The EMA seems to on­ly be mea­sur­ing par­tic­u­late mat­ter, which is most­ly dust, and they are not mea­sur­ing the tox­ins."He said the smoke con­tained "diox­ins, recog­nised car­cino­gens (that) can cause birth de­for­mi­ties and oth­er ill­ness­es."De Ver­teuil al­so high­light­ed the fact that some plas­tics con­tained cyanide, which was be­ing in­haled by the pop­u­la­tion. He said the EMA was al­so be­ing disin­gen­u­ous in re­fer­ring to the air pol­lu­tion rules when there was no leg­is­la­tion to sup­port them."The rules are still a draft...It is du­plic­i­tous to act as though we have a per­mit­ted lev­el when we have no leg­is­la­tion to deal with this," de Ver­teuil said."The so­lu­tion is re­cy­cling and sep­a­ra­tion of waste. We can re­cy­cle at least 80 per cent of our waste."We can close down the dumps if we do this and en­gi­neer the For­res Park dump to a prop­er land­fill. We are slow­ly be­ing poi­soned. Gov­ern­ment needs to im­ple­ment re­cy­cling and waste sep­a­ra­tion."