SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

An on­go­ing fire at the Gua­napo land­fill has led to Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion May­or Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian fac­ing a bar­rage of com­plaints and ob­scen­i­ties from an­gry burgess­es about pro­longed smoke in­hala­tion and health ef­fects.

Though the fire start­ed at the land­fill on Tues­day it is yet to be ex­tin­guished.

For days a haze has cov­ered Ari­ma and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties with smoke par­ti­cles.

Asth­mat­ics and peo­ple with res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions have com­plained of short­ness of breath and eyes and throat ir­ri­ta­tions.

Many have voiced dis­plea­sure on so­cial me­dia about their health be­ing af­fect­ed, de­creased vis­i­bil­i­ty on the road­ways and be­ing un­able to ven­ture out­side of their homes to re­lax.

Yes­ter­day, Holy Cross Col­lege dis­missed class­es ear­ly be­cause of the vol­ume of smoke in the at­mos­phere.

Mor­ris-Ju­lian said health of­fi­cials have promised to treat peo­ple who have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing breath­ing prob­lems from smoke in­hala­tion.

“It’s not just Ari­ma. It (smoke) is reach­ing as far as Tu­na­puna. It’s re­al­ly of con­cern to me.”

Ari­ma has a pop­u­la­tion of over 40,000.

Apart from re­ceiv­ing com­plaints, Mor­ris-Ju­lian said, “I get­ting a few cussing. Peo­ple call­ing me all hours of the night to say how the smoke af­fect­ing them. I live in Ari­ma and I am al­so af­fect­ed...I know what the peo­ple are go­ing through. I feel their pain.”

The land­fill falls with­in the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC)

David Man­swell, gen­er­al man­ag­er of Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) un­der whose purview the land­fill falls said two fires oc­curred si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly on Tues­day.

“One was a bush fire and the oth­er was at the land­fill.”

He said air qual­i­ty tests con­duct­ed by SWM­COL on Wednes­day in Blan­chisseuse and in out­skirts com­mu­ni­ties showed there was “no el­e­vat­ed lev­el of gas­es in the at­mos­phere.”

What con­tin­ues to be an is­sue for SWM­COL, Man­swell said is the high lev­el of smoke.

Man­swell said the fire which was trig­gered by nor­mal land­fill methane gas­es has been con­tained by a team of SWM­COL, Fire Ser­vice and TPRC work­ers but not ex­tin­guished.

SWM­COL has tem­porar­i­ly closed the land­fill un­til the fire is brought un­der con­trol.

Man­swell said it was dif­fi­cult to put out un­der­ground fires in a land­fill, stat­ing that they have been try­ing their best.

“The as­sur­ance I can give to the pub­lic is that we are work­ing fever­ish­ly to get sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments by lat­er this evening. A lot of peo­ple would know how a land­fill op­er­ates and I am not go­ing to try to hood­wink the pop­u­la­tion and say this is go­ing to be done overnight on in a cou­ple of hours,” Man­swell said.

En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Hay­den Ro­mano ad­mit­ted that the au­thor­i­ty did not con­duct any air tests in Gua­napo based on the three (test­ing) me­ters they have sta­tioned at Sea Lots, Point Lisas and To­ba­go.

The me­ters con­duct tests over pro­longed pe­ri­ods.

“Each piece of equip­ment costs $1 mil­lion and you have to main­tain them by chang­ing the analy­sers. We have three. We are in the process of ac­quir­ing the fourth which will be lo­cat­ed in San Fer­nan­do. We would re­al­ly like to have about nine. The coun­try is not where we would like it to be. But we are get­ting there.”

Ro­mano said SWM­COL has been con­duct­ing air tests every two hours.

“In all our per­mits the ap­pli­cant is re­quired to do the test­ing. We spec­i­fy the method­ol­o­gy and the ac­cept­able stan­dards and we will re­view to see that they are test­ing in ac­cor­dance with those stan­dards.”

Ro­mano said the EMA will un­der­go tests if they are dis­sat­is­fied with SWM­COL’s re­sults, stat­ing that test­ing was an ex­pen­sive ven­ture.

Ro­mano em­pathised with af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties, stat­ing that in­hal­ing smoke for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods was “un­ac­cept­able.”