Dr Azad Mo­hammed

Sol­id waste gen­er­at­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go is cur­rent­ly de­posit­ed in one of five land­fill fa­cil­i­ties at Beetham, Gua­napo, For­res Park, Guapo and Studly Park in To­ba­go. The largest of these is the Beetham Land­fill, an un­lined fa­cil­i­ty lo­cat­ed south­east of Port- of-Spain, and on the north­ern edge of the Ca­roni swamp, the largest man­grove swamp in Trinidad. This means that the wa­ter ta­ble is rel­a­tive­ly high. This presents a unique en­vi­ron­men­tal prob­lem as the waste de­posit­ed and leachate from the land­fill can eas­i­ly en­ter in­to the swamp and near shore coastal en­vi­ron­ments.

Beetham re­ceives an av­er­age 840 tonnes of waste per day. In 2009, it was es­ti­mat­ed that the waste de­posit­ed in three of the ma­jor land­fills, in­creased by about 193 per cent. A large num­ber of ad­verse im­pacts may oc­cur from land­fill op­er­a­tions. These in­clud­ed: fa­tal ac­ci­dents (scav­engers,�buried un­der waste piles or crushed by trucks); in­fra­struc­ture dam­age (e.g., dam­age to ac­cess roads by heavy ve­hi­cles);�pol­lu­tion�(such as con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of ground­wa­ter)� off gassing of methane, a tox­ic green­house gas gen­er­at­ed by de­cay­ing or­gan­ic wastes; smoke and ash (gen­er­at­ed from un­con­trolled fires); har­bour­ing dis­ease vec­tors�such as rats, mos­qui­toes and flies; in­juries to wildlife� (from leached tox­ic ma­te­ri­als); and dust, odour,�and noise pol­lu­tion.

Land­fill gas­es con­sist pri­mar­i­ly of methane (40-60 per cent) which is gen­er­at­ed from biodegrad­able garbage rot­ting in a land­fill. Methane is a 'green­house gas'�which con­tributes to glob­al warm­ing and is 21 times more po­tent in its green­house ef­fect than car­bon diox­ide. Land­fills are the largest man-made source of methane (37 per cent glob­al­ly). The Eu­ro­pean Union has moved to ban biodegrad­able ma­te­r­i­al from land­fills, sep­a­rat­ing and com­post­ing these ma­te­ri­als un­der con­trolled con­di­tions thus sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing methane pro­duc­tion.

These ma­te­ri­als are re­cy­cled in­to com­post, a valu­able re­source for fer­til­is­ing soil.

Oth­er land­fill gas­es in­clude c "non-methane or­gan­ic com­pounds" or NMOCs which make up about one per cent of the land­fill gas. NMOCs may in­clude tox­ic chem­i­cals such as ben­zene, toluene, chlo­ro­form, vinyl chlo­ride, car­bon tetra­chlo­ride, and 1,1,1 trichloroethane. When prod­ucts con­tain­ing halo­genat­ed chem­i­cals (plas­tics, Sty­ro­foam, white pa­per, elec­tron­ics) un­der­go low tem­per­a­ture com­bus­tion they can gen­er­ate high­ly tox­ic com­pounds such as diox­ins and fu­rans, the most tox­ic chem­i­cals ever stud­ied. While plas­tic usu­al­ly burns in an open-air fire, the diox­ins re­main af­ter com­bus­tion and ei­ther float off in­to the at­mos­phere, or may re­main in the ash where it can be leached down in­to ground­wa­ter when rain falls. The ash and smoke par­ti­cles can be­come aerosolised en­ter the at­mos­phere and be trans­port­ed away from the site, as is com­mon in Port-of-Spain when fires are burn­ing in the Beetham dump.

These sus­pend­ed ma­te­ri­als may con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to res­pi­ra­to­ry stress in peo­ple. Rain­fall cou­pled with any liq­uid waste, re­sults in the ex­trac­tion of wa­ter-sol­u­ble com­pounds cre­at­ing a tox­ic leachate, com­mon­ly re­ferred to as "garbage soup". This leachate con­sists of a com­plex mix­ture of heavy met­als, or­gan­ic com­pounds and tox­ic chem­i­cals. This presents a ma­jor threat to the cur­rent and fu­ture qual­i­ty of ground­wa­ter and near­by man­grove ecosys­tems at Beetham. Flood­ing and sur­face run off can al­so car­ry sol­id ma­te­ri­als from the site and pol­lute oth­er near­by ar­eas. A num­ber of forces may act on or re­act with the mi­grat­ing leachate, re­sult­ing in changes of chem­istry and a gen­er­al re­duc­tion of strength.

Al­though many of these re­ac­tions have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to re­duce the po­ten­tial im­pact to ground­wa­ter, some (such as mi­cro­bial degra­da­tion) can ac­tu­al­ly in­crease the tox­i­c­i­ty by pro­duc­ing by-prod­ucts that are more haz­ardous than the orig­i­nal con­t­a­m­i­nant. For ex­am­ple vinyl chlo­ride can be gen­er­at­ed from the degra­da­tion of trichloroethene (chem­i­cal in­dus­try, rub­ber man­u­fac­tur­ers, heavy equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing, the tim­ber prod­ucts in­dus­try, the plas­tics and syn­thet­ics in­dus­tries and laun­dries). The com­plex na­ture of these ef­flu­ents pos­es a health risk for ecosys­tems and hu­man health as they could cause di­rect tox­i­c­i­ty or bio ac­cu­mu­late in or­gan­isms."

This Sun­day on Clean­ing up the Mess, on CNC3 at 10.30 am and 6 pm our Mul­ti Me­dia crew, cam­era­man Joel Al­lick and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kei­th Matthews and Ira Math­ur, bring you more in­ter­views and im­ages from the Beetham dump. Al­ban Scott�Ex­ec­u­tive Man­ag­er, Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd and di­rec­tor of Waste Dis­pos­als Ltd,�Al­lan­de­Boehm­ler tell us more on the state of the na­tions dumps and the plight of some 500 scav­engers who live there.�Send in your pho­tos and com­ments to cleaningupthemess @guardian.co.tt�and join our face­book page on�http://www.face­book.com/cleaningupthemess?ref=ts.