Dump talks roll on as deal still not finalised
(CNS): Talks between Dart and the Cayman Islands Government over the waste-management project, ReGen, are continuing as another deadline passes, officials have confirmed. The date for the signing of the finalised contract for the waste-to-energy and recycling centre has been pushed back to the end of September, and the new project longstop date, when the works are completed and the facility is operational, is now 30 November. It is now 2,123 days since the Dart-led consortium won the bid to deal with Cayman’s garbage problem.
In a press release issued Friday afternoon from his sustainability ministry, Premier Wayne Panton said the two sides continue to make steady progress on the negotiations to finalise the deal, but the public-private partnership team had recently agreed to the new deadlines.
“As I have explained before, the project agreement signed in 2021 contained dozens of conditions that still needed to be negotiated and agreed,” the premier said. “Since that time, the joint project team has reduced the outstanding items down to a small number of items remaining to be addressed by the new financial close deadline.”
Panton claimed that the talks were “on a solid footing” towards concluding the negotiations and moving “from the procurement phase of the project to the implementation and construction phase”.
The premier said he wanted to “reiterate that the length of the project negotiations reflects both the complexity of the project and the project team’s desire to ensure this deal represents value for money for the people of the Cayman Islands”. Doing nothing was not an option, he added.
“But we also know that, for ReGen to truly be the future of sustainable waste management in the Cayman Islands, it needs to be affordable now and in the long term,” Panton stated. “These facilities represent a significant investment in the future well-being of our country and, as with all major project decisions, we are taking our fiscal responsibility seriously.”
The talks began in October 2017 and dragged on through the last Progressive-led administration. The preliminary deal was signed just weeks before the 2021 General Election, which paved the way for Dart to begin remediating a significant part of the landfill — located adjacent to its Camana Bay development — reducing the operational part of the dump.
Since then, the developer has also begun work on an environmental impact assessment. According to officials, the public consultation for the draft Environmental Statement is scheduled to launch this month, and public meetings are scheduled for later this month. However, there has been no progress on the wider project, such as the proposed composting element and the education campaign to begin reducing the amount of waste the country produces.
Dart Executive Director Cameron Graham said the consortium had continued to work in partnership with the government across all areas of the ReGen Project Agreement (PA) to ensure that the CIG had the information required to achieve financial close by 30 September.
“This unique project requires continual communication with project partners, contractors and inter-government agencies to ensure its successful development, and it is reassuring that all parties have remained aligned throughout the protracted negotiation process,” Graham said in the same press release. “With a clear pathway to financial close, we are excited to execute the PA and transition to the detailed design, construction and ultimately operation of ReGen that remains critically important infrastructure to the sustainable development of the Cayman Islands.”
The draft Environmental Statement will be available on the ReGen and Department of Environment websites from 18 August, and hard copies will be in community spaces across all three islands from 18 August for public viewing.
Meetings are expected to take place on 28, 29 and 30 August in Grand Cayman at venues that have yet to be confirmed.
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Category: Environmental Health, Health
Nobody is talking about RRR ♻️
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – these three ‘R’ words are an important part of sustainable living, as they help to cut down on the amount of waste we throw away.
Only RRR will solve the waste problem.
Just like the Public Transportation System will solve the traffic problem.
But keep inventing the bicycle.
DART want to incinerate the trash in a WTE facility they will run at a profit, generating electricity they’ll sell back to CUC at a profit, with belching smokestacks with no emissions standards, and trading for toxic fly ash and concentrated sludge going back into a pile at the same location. They’ve also never done this before.
Dart responded to an RFP, they have no interest in burning anything.
We are too small.
Just pack it up and ship it off island, pay someone else to deal with it.
Long term we need a solution. Short term, get it out.
Kenny, you paying attention?
Do the Caymanians of the future need a new airport or a new dump? One word answer will do.
Neither. They need to reduce waste by 90% by implementing RRR like they do it in Japan.
Pictures might help.
an environmental impact assessment is needed to clean up an environmental disaster!
Just drop the discussion. The remaining deal is clearly not feasible. Start over with bids from people who are actually in the business of constructing/managing waste disposal plants. There are many.
There are – but they don’t own over a third of our land mass and many of our politicians 😉
I thought the “T” in PACT stood for “Transparency”.
This issue is one of the most important issues facing the community on this island yet the CIG continues to waffle along month after month without providing any justifiable rationale for this delay. If the ministers in this government are too inept to understand the ramifications of their inaction then they need to step aside and let someone with the requisite competence take over.
Ahh – Transparency. Like the refusal to disclose the commercial basis of the deal to fly to Barbados because its confidential, even though its using public assets and financing? Or the failure to provide for the multi billion dollar continent medical liability because that much Transparency would eliminate our declared surpluses? How about People? Where we are going to build a private jet terminal for the ultra rich and finance it with passenger taxes on ordinary people? Or Accountability or Competence? These are all just jargon terms for Wayne and his rabble – you are not meant to think they actually MEAN anything or expect them to deliver on it. Its not as if it was a campaign commitment or anything. Oh – wait…
Re: “without providing any justifiable rationale for this delay”. It’s been previously relayed that the PPM/Unity “agreed to agree” and awarded this lucrative government contract to private party DART/REGEN without a bid proposal. Does that not trigger your Transparency sensors? There was no bid document or plan submitted to merit the award, and DART are doing their usual darnedest to ply a bad deal on the people of Cayman. Kudos to PACT for so far rejecting the BS, and even better if they cancel for bad faith entirely, and reopen competitive RFP tendering to genuine international expertise. We shouldn’t be buying that DART are experts in everything they baksheesh.
It is very clear that PACT/Wayne does not want DART to move ahead with the deal on the table and are looking for ways to frustrate them into giving up the contract. this instead of simply telling them, we are not moving forward with you! Wayne is the most inept, pathetic, uselsss Premier we have had and that is after comparing him to Mac, Julie, and Alden!
Now that’s not fair – he’s not a Premier, he’s just Kenny and Mac’s sock puppet.
It’s the other way around. DART are trying to ply a bad deal on PACT and the people of the Cayman Islands. There was never any proposal agreed by PPM/Unity and ReGen. Reversing the narrative is what DART does to pressure dumb regimes into capitulation. Signing bad commitments for the people of the Cayman Islands is not a leadership trait we need any more of.
Either way… Wayne is not speaking up and telling us whats going on
Its only 1460 days since this was initiated, it’s supposedly going to cabinet but nobody knows the content, – Poor, Aggregate, Consistency, Till hell freezes over, that’s going to be your legacy Wayne
https://caymannewsservice.com/2023/06/plastic-ban-to-include-eight-single-use-items/
Garbage dump explosion in one of the poorest Mexican urban neighborhoods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXg05kZl64
Only in Cayman the garbage dump is located in one of the richest neighborhoods.
Oh no. Anyway…
We need an environmental impact assessment to get rid of an environmental disaster!
Activate the consultants!
And Panton continues dithering month after month whilst using “value for money” as an excuse.
Fixing the dump is an existential threat to these Islands and “value for money”, in the traditional sense, should not be the priority here when each day that ticks by is becoming more and more costly in terms of the effects on health, tourism, fire safety etc.
Tired of these excuses and shifting goalposts – just get it done.
Because money isn’t an issue Dart are simply never held accountable for project deadlines or costs hence the issues seen here and throughout their projects. A corporation watching every dollar and day would behave very differently and employ a very different set of individuals.
In this case I doubt that Dart is the responsible party for these deadlines being constantly pushed back. That honor lies with the world class CIG…
With what ReGen proposal did DART win the award? Let’s see it. There isn’t one.
What doesnt own…
“…and the new project longstop date, when the works are completed and the facility is operational, is now 30 November” – WHAT????? Nov30 of WHAT YEAR?
CNS, what are you smoking to report something like that without question? Will be a decade before it’s done once the contract is finalized.
The correct solution will never be Cheap or appear reasonable. ….”VALUE FOR MONEY” needs to be viewed against the insurmountable and ever growing future costs of continuing to do nothing. Those metrics are unknown, not easy to assess in dollar terms, but I would wager a Cayman Dime they are FAR greater than the current cost of getting this incinerator up and running. Spend the money now, please.
but first, high rises for the rich
If I were rich,I wouldn’t want to live in a high-rise on a tropical island.
never been a better time to buy!
there is no-one in cig or civil service with expertise or qualifications to tackle the complexity of this issue.
if we can’t be honest and face these facts we will never be closer to a solution.
classic cig ‘soon-come’ update….zzzzzz
just another day in wonderland
Dart is not the solution.
time for class action lawsuit against the incompetence of the civil service and cig.
Go for it, let me know what law firm with half a brain is going to take you on.
Clawback against DART more like. These vultures haven’t deserved any of what we’ve gifted them.
in the private sector head would roll for such incompetence.
another bad day at the office for wayne.
Any chance of getting our glass recycling back?
Unfortunately not till Uncle Dart gets his way☹️
How much are the people of Cayman paying DEH not to manage the dump, while also paying an unqualified third party to do their job? Is there an option where we only pay once?
About 2% of all import duties. Didn’t you get the memo when residential garbage fees ended some years ago?
exactly. Here’s a fund experiment: call DEH at any time of day that they should answer the phone and see if anyone picks up. 90% of the time it forwards to the cell phone of an on-call person who cannot transfer you to anyone or help with your problem. The other 10% of the time the operator answers and whoever you get transferred to then will not.
try this with any cig department
To be fair, WORC now answers the phone. They just dont process the applications – but perfectly happy to answer the phone and tell you that they haven’t dealt with it yet. Or have nay idea when they will. The latest gem I had was to be told that I shouldn’t send an e mail enquiry because they don’t have enough time to deal promptly with e mail enquiries, and I should come in in person because then I would at least be able to speak to someone, whereas they couldn’t guarantee responding to an e mail.
Typing is hard.
The best part is WORC “scheduling” things to be heard on Public Holidays as they need a placeholder in their system.
Right now, there are hundreds of applications due to be heard on December 25th…
Can’t make this stuff up. They will answer a question over the phone that will have a 50% probability of being correct and then if you ask for confirmation in writing via email, they will send you a different answer a week or two later. Unfortunately, this is often very late for the people affected.
But all of this is good for law firms and immigration consultants!
There should be competitive bids again to determine value for money for suach a large needed investment
Sure, kick the can down the road another 20 years, it’s the Cayman way. Be prepared to realign the ETH though, Wayne is expanding the dump over that side every day.
How about: there should be bids!? Dart didn’t submit a proposal. A mostly PPM Unity Cabinet glad-handed DART an unqualified agreement to agree during the last 10 minutes of their term, and during pre-election period. It should be canceled entirely and an RFP opportunity published. ACC should also be investigating how this happened.
You know how it go now Dart is runin’ tings. Not, never gonna happen. Nope.
I hope CIG is not sleeping.
When Temperatures Rise—The Challenges of Hot Landfills
https://www.tetratech.com/en/blog/when-temperatures-rise-the-challenges-of-hot-landfills
“Landfills are generally considered to be hot landfills when temperatures exceed 140°F, although some site and regional conditions might explain higher normal temperatures. However, temperatures of up to 250°F have been measured in municipal solid waste landfills when they are undergoing a subsurface reaction. High heat has even been measured in saturated waste. At these temperatures, “thermal runaway” can occur. This means the increased temperature changes conditions in a way that causes even further increases, often leading to destructive results.”
Cool, we can only hope critical mass is achieved in the dump and it goes “newkiller”.
When temperatures rise and humidity is high what could possibly go wrong?
Landfills naturally yield a considerable amount of flammable methane gas.
Long-decaying organic material mixed with the right weather conditions (like an extra-dry heat wave) creates a “sweet spot” for fire.
Landfill gas explosion Southwestern Pennsylvania https://www.industrialfireworld.com/571654/gas-explosion-at-pennsylvania-landfill-injures-1
North Raleigh landfill fire
https://www.wnct.com/news/north-carolina/north-raleigh-landfill-fire-could-continue-for-a-month-officials-say/
North Raleigh landfill fire
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/06/phoenix-fire-record-response-recyling-yard/
Good, hope it does go boom and then maybe everyone will get a piece of the dump in their own backyard😂
Do you mean six feet under?
Chernobyl will look like a safer place to live if this happens.
With the scorching outdoor temperatures the accumulation of heat in the depths of the Dump is building up…
What is the point of setting deadlines if you never stick to them Wayne? July 31st was the 4th or 5th “long drop” deadline that has been ignored.
Meanwhile, dump 2.0 grows larger and smellier by the day. Time is ticking…
These are DART’s self-imposed deadlines on a CIG that agreed to agree without any terms. Shouldn’t the public want there to a be contract? No wonder DART owns everything.
” It is now 2,123 days since the Dart-led consortium won the bid to deal with Cayman’s garbage problem. ”
and apparently, it shall be 2123 before we can get this issue sorted.
There was no submitted proposal to win the lucrative government contract on merit, so all the issues have to spill out later as DART grinds for profit. PACT need to cancel all DART agreements, and land gifts, and either hire the same outside expertise DART recruits o fill their knowledge gaps, or put these opportunities out to tender again. We haven’t had any managerial talent in any Cabinet of the last 20 years.
Don’t sugar coat it. Probably you meant to say anyone competent in Cabinet for the last 30 years.