ReGen EIA finished but project still in limbo
(CNS): The construction of the proposed waste-to-energy facility and other related waste-management projects remain in limbo 2370 days after the Cayman Islands Government awarded the contract to Dart before the details of the deal had been worked out. Last week, Department of Environment (DoE) Director Gina Ebank-Petrie said that the environmental impact assessment on the project, known as ReGen, was complete and an environmental plan had been drafted. However, there is no sign of a financial close, and Dart has told the DoE that it cannot finalise that plan until the deal is done.
Speaking at a National Conservation Council meeting last week, Ebanks-Petrie outlined the status of the EIA. She said the Environmental Advisory Board created to oversee the EIA process had reviewed the final report, which was submitted on 19 March, and found it to be an adequate representation of the facts.
But she said the plan that had been drafted was not a complete document. She also noted that the EAB had no input into or knowledge of the negotiations, though the draft document does include the mitigating measures recommended during the EIA process.
“We were told by the ReGen that they couldn’t finalise the environmental management plan at this point because the project has not reached completion,” she said, adding that the EAB had requested they “continue” to be involved in further reviews.
CNS has asked the Ministry of Sustainability about the status of its negotiations with Dart but we have not received a response. Numerous deadlines to close the deal have come and gone since Dart was picked as the preferred bidder six and a half years ago.
In March 2021, just days before the last election, the PPM-led administration signed a deal with Dart and a consortium of companies to take on the contract. This move was heavily criticised and the next premier, Wayne Panton, said on numerous occasions that it was an inadequate agreement.
As a result, the financing for the project is still being negotiated, and the high costs that Dart is seeking to run the facility are said to still be causing considerable concern for the government.
Nevertheless, the PPM government allowed Dart to cover the original George Town dump. The fact that this is located close to the heart of the Dart Group’s property portfolio at Camana Bay is thought to be one of the main motivating factors that led the islands’ wealthiest developer to get involved in the waste-management business.
Allowing the developer to cover a significant section of the landfill has removed Dart’s incentive for getting the project moving and left Grand Cayman with a potential garbage crisis.
Space is now very limited at the dump, but Cayman’s growing population is producing more and more garbage every day with no mitigation measures, such as comprehensive recycling efforts, composting or other reduce and reuse programmes. As a result, the Department of Environmental Health could run out of space to dump the garbage it collects before the waste-to-energy facility, which will be burning the rubbish, is complete.
When, or if, the project gets underway, it will include a 158-foot-high ventilation stack, a boiler house and a waste bunker. Under the proposed deal, Dart is also supposed to increase and improve recycling efforts on the island, create a composting site, and conduct a campaign to encourage people to reduce what they consume and reuse what they can’t reduce.
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Category: Environmental Health, Health
Just more proof(if you need more) that CIG is just not smart enough to do the hard stuff in running a little island well. But it is all they have. Just get used to it and use your smarts to do the best you can with what you got.
This is a UK operation.
https://enfinium.co.uk
Vietnamese tycoon developer, Truong My Lan, has been sentenced to death for fraud, political bribery, and other crimes. Little did she know, how well she might have thrived in the Cayman Islands developer climate. Cayman regimes have gifted hundreds of acres of prime seven mile beach land, and lucrative unqualified contracts, to their preferred developer, without transparency or supervising performance, even while the central finance sector wonders aloud how we make the corruption short lists. The accepted culture of piracy needs an intervention. ReGen and tunnels to nowhere being every day examples of our toxic governance dysfunction. Caymanians need to care to fix it.
Lets be clear – Caymanians SOLD their land to developers. They didn’t feel guilty cashing Uncle DART’s checks.
Actually, Caymanians were not consulted at all on the gifting of hundreds of acres of public Crown land in the various NRA Agreement versions. Dart paid seven million cash and the rest in unsupervised promises, and all-knowing oversight – some of it, like airport connector, still not delivered.
Actually, they were. Caymanians elected their representatives.
No. Jamaicans elected Caymanian’s representatives. Just sayin.
To those that like and value clean air: according to the IQAir app station run at CIS, Cayman’s airborne particulate quality is right now only scoring moderate (50-100) at 53 PM2.5 13ug/m3, and that is before the forever burning garbage oven plan, and smoke stack.
I think you will find that it possible to have quite clean emissions from such an operation.
FALSE. Not without any emissions rules it isn’t. This EIA doesn’t reference the normal best practise equipment used around the world to contain hazardous and cancerous effluent.
Fools always get what they deserve. Cayman still dumps it’s trash on an ever growing pile and leaves it there. They still feel that covering trash with more trash is recycling. This will not change in your lifetime.
The “contract” being awarded to Dart by the regressives on their way out the door reeks of corruption and the project should be re-tendered.
Cayman shouldn’t be looking at WTE at all. It’s not responsible problem solving in the context of a +1.5’C 2024.
Exactly. No WTE. It is illogical and intellectually flawed.
So what is your proposed solution?
Ship it by barge to neighbouring economy with both real estate and appetite for it. We are very well positioned to select from several nearby bidders.
Or dig a hole. Line it, and layer our rubbish. Then cap it and plant trees.
Take the billion dollars saved, and create a sovereign wealth fund.
That’s why this started as ISWMS: Integrated Slid Waste Management System. And the pretty waste triangle. With composting and recycling (and reduction) reducing the amount of waste ending up at incineration; and nice scrubbers in the smoke stack to take out as much of the green house gasses, particulate matter we don’t want to breathe in, etc., as possible. (That ‘really nasty densely compressed stuff’ would then go to a properly lined landfill.) Oh, and it would handle the waste from the sister islands as well. Actually about the most modern, i.e., best of bad options, solution you can find. Because it was a system. And because there is no good way to deal with garbage. (Hence the 1st R = Reduce your waste. Like having a plan before approving the demolition-to-the-dump of multi-storey buildings to build bigger multi-storey buildings.)
The question we should be asking is why the contract wasn’t signed for the advertised & promised system? (Including the increase in funding for Reduction – Composting – Recycling) Hmmmm? Roy? I think you were saying in the Parliament the other day that it was a great contract una signed and you couldn’t think of any reason it hadn’t been finalized yet? Surely someone kept a copy.
CIG released their list of strategic priorities document yesterday. This is a 22 page document that outlines 20 key priorities for the next two years.
“Landfill” or “dump” or “Regen” is not mentioned once in the entire document.
This goes a long way to highlight the lack of importance that this CIG is giving to this project.
Jon-Jon might have problems securing the wotes if he can’t spout that he doesn’t want it in his backyard again during next years election campaign.
Has he addressed the effect of the eclipse and a full moon yet?
Government needs to start a robust recycling and waste export program already. This is nothing new. It just needs action.
WTE is outdated technology. The UK will soon require WTE facilities to manage the carbon capture process as well. We should be looking at full recycling, and a lined and engineered landfill where we can recapture the methane to generate electricity to then run a battery operated fleet of trucks. This is nothing new and is being done around the world. No need to reinvent the wheel.
You may recall they looked at that in 2011. The nimby’s of Bodden Town refused to take their turn stockpiling the islands trash.
Nimbys? Those people made the right choice, they were proposing 6 “pits” only tow of which would be lined, if they wanted the other 4 lined they would have to pay Dart to do it.
PS. Wayne Panton opposed the Dump in Bodden Town in 2013 when he was wit the PPM.
Then again, in the same district several quarries drilling well below MSL, with no objection. Selective outrage.
Incineration is the most expensive way to manage waste.
https://www.no-burn.org/wp-content/uploads/The-High-Cost-of-Waste-Incineration-March-30.
It’s not incineration, it’s Waste to Energy, where incineration is the first step and the heat is used to run a generator.
…I think you’ll find the heat is maintained from adding waste as fire fuel, through an oven of incineration. The dump will be on fire all the time, just managed in an oven. Ergo, the 158 ft smoke stack to vent the hot ash and smoke from that process of incineration.
No, the dump won’t be on fire. Absurd claim. Also, the carbon released is FAR less than that from a open-to-air landfill as we now have.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/biomass/waste-to-energy-in-depth.php
WTE is a controlled burn of garbage fuel in an oven to create heat which propels an inefficient energy recovery system – energy that will increase public utility rates, not lower them. Added to which, new problems of air and water particulate and health care costs. We’d be far better off sending it by barge to a neighbouring regional partner with spare real estate to accommodate it.
No we would not. You are hoping that nobody looks at the links above. You are probably right in assuming that people will not do any research.
Still, if anyone chooses to look at the links above and/or does research of their own they will see your for the liar that you are.
They should have made John- John be in charge of the Ren Gen as he is only one known to get things done.
Lol
and a lot toxic molecules – there is no beating around the bush on this one, the associated toxic load is incredibly heavy and there is enough cancer in Cayman already. The Dart project needs to be cancelled ASAP. They are on the wrong path.
Link above is broken, but I found the article. if you read the article, it was written by the tinfoil hat folks. Beware posters with “an agenda”
“The idea that incinerators are a viable solution to handling waste is fundamentally flawed. Incinerators continue to operate by perpetuating a false narrative that they transform waste into energy (WTE plants) or magically make our waste disappear. In truth, incineration merely transforms our domestic waste issues into more complex toxic waste problems, such as toxic ash. Toxic ash creates air and water pollution, which is harder to contain and usually more toxic than waste in its original form. Incinerators that claim to turn waste into energy are also highly inefficient. They are one of the most expensive ways to generate energy. In addition to being costly to build and run, they are also barely able to generate even a small amount of electricity, and emit 68% more greenhouse gases per unit of energy than coal plants.”
https://www.no-burn.org/zero-incineration/
Counterpoint: we don’t have a growing pile of coal to deal with.
The consideration should be:
1) Pile the trash in one (or more) new locations locally.
2) Deliver the trash somewhere other than locally (they might pile it, burn it, or eat it for all we care, it’s their trash now).
3a) Burn the trash
3b) Burn the trash and recapture some of that energy into electricity as a byproduct
Between 3a and 3b, if it costs more to put in place the equipment to capture that energy and convert it to electricity than the value of the electricity to be sold, you might as well just burn it.
#4 used to be that garbage was put on a barge and bulldozed into the trench. Cayman doesn’t have the skill set, or integrity for anything other than #2.
Dart continues to tighten its grip on the country’s gonads.
have we any left?
Meanwhile the lawyers, accountants, engineers etc continue to bill CIG for this project…which has no closing date.
This is such a disgrace that this project isn’t #1 or #2 priority over EVERYTHING. You want to benefit all the people? Get this done! #2 real and reliable public transportation.
Then, and ONLY then, build your Highway, your airport runways, your overpriced high schools, your boutique hotels.
Good gravy, who are they working to benefit? So pissed off. I swore to myself I wouldn’t come here anymore.
Hear! Hear! And the same for the all other environmental issues – this is THEE biggest environmental issue the nation has! People continue focus on their back yard. Literally in some cases.
The current path needs to be cancelled and a new path charted, for good. Cancer is already a problem without a huge additional cancerous toxic load on top.
Self-ascribed environmentalists voting for a waste incinerator oven, where DART get paid to process free fuel and sell energy to CUC for them to sell on to us. Plus the airborne soot, particulate, fly ash…kiss the skyline and western reef life goodbye. In a norwester, all this hot soot is going to settle in Bodden Town and East End.
You have zero clue about the technology. Despite the constant attempts at educating people on the process, you think that it’s all just belching out a chimney. Jeez.
There is nothing clean about incineration. The electrical power generated, which DART will sell to CUC for them to turn around and sell back to us, is neither clean, nor efficient. We will get screwed at every corner of this deal.
Where’s the Analysis of the Economic and
Environmental Viability of the Waste-to-Energy project?
🚮Cayman doesn’t have solid waste management legislation.
🛑Clean Air Act and Standards for Waste Management don’t exist.
🛑There’re no National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants.
🛑There’re no WtE Performance Standards
🛑There’re no Waste Incineration Rules
🛑There’s no local expertise to built and run WtE Plant, to monitor its emissions and enforce non-existent rules and regulations
🛑There’s no equipment to monitor emissions and no qualified personnel to use the non-existent equipment.
How in the world the WtE project was approved❓
It would require an army of highly trained and experienced expats to build and run WtE Plant.
Cancer rates in Grand Cayman are frightening already.
show me your cancer stats.
or are you just making everything up???
Go to Cayman cemeteries.
We should note the absence of sensible air quality regulations, even with all these intervening years of planning. Missing standards do not point to any necessity of baghouses, scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators to filter out air pollutants and flue gases like nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and carcinogenic particulates.
The 158-foot tall smokestack, perhaps inadequate for purpose, will need new building height laws. At 10ft per floor, at least to 16 stories, making it nearly as tall as the Arc de Triumph in Paris, a little bit shorter than the Tower of Pisa. This is the real objective: Building Code changes. Wait for it.
It wasn’t just the details, there was completely lacking a winning proposal.
This is such a joke. World class BS is all this Government knows how to produce.
We should be glad this and the last regime haven’t signed yet another caustic unresearched deal, as was routine in prior UDP/PPM times. The PPM who awarded this contract, outside of the merit-based process, should be under investigation/arrest themselves. Yet, Cayman’s voters allow them to remain in the LA. That is the punchline to your joke.
the usual shambles and incompetence by cig.
don’t worry we can ask some hard questions at the next cig press conference…oh wait…
Didn’t the Honorable Premier address this in her speech to the chamber of commerce forum? Don’t worry UPM under her great leadership has it all under control folks!
The ignorance and incompetence of successive governments since 1988 has led us down this arduous road. Now the same rebranded dishonourable idiots who failed to understand the scope and financial implications of a deal with the devil we know so well have allowed themselves to be backed into a cul-de-sac from which they cannot escape.
The deal will eventually be done and we will most likely never see true figures for what we are paying for but we will surely pay well over the odds for it. This is Cayman’s penance for decades of solid waste mismanagement.
However, we may have to pay double or more if this garbage Cabinet are bent over backwards by Dart’s incessant leveraging. Either way we are on the way to increased government fees and indirect taxes to take out our trash.
“Indirect taxes” is perhaps optimistic. We can thank the PPM for this.
“Successive governments since 1988” ….You mean the ones before were competent? Were you here then? Did you attend the LA? Or listen on the radio? Or assess what laws they passed? Like all governments, there was some positive stuff but by and large our governments have been useless for many many years though I agree this one with its empty flights to Barbados surpasses all others.
To be fair even some other North American and European jurisdictions were doing the exact same thing with solid waste as Cayman back then. But then again you expect anyone in this region to have over 30 years foresight in that same era?
The Dart deal needs to be cancelled in the public interest.
2 years now no glass recycling. Shameful.
How about we re-start recycling glass?
Waste glass will never be collected by DEH until ReGen gets up and running. Don’t hold your breath, instead you might as well get yourself a hammer and a paper bag. Start smashing your own glass and throw it inna ya yard.
Glass isn’t desirable feed for WTE.
You are right, however there is NOBODY out there that believes that glass should be part of the WTE fodder. Glass in EVERY venue around the world is recycled.
Go for it bruh. Who is stopping you?
Well, for one, supposedly, we already appointed an amateur-led waste contractor to manage this disposal problem. Why should we reward their failure with additional lucrative contracts? Cut them and retender to qualified international professional bidders. The CIG needs to change how they deal with DART.
It was a tender process, the terms of which were devised by the government. One bid won, the others lost. Time to move on.
Dart were not the bid process winners, they were the awardees by PPM Cabinet. That’s a big difference.
What’s the incentive? CIG offers nothing, not even a duty break on equipment import for diverting this inert voluminous waste stream from their dump. Dart wasn’t making any money off if and if there was money in it someone would have been doing is decades ago. So my final question to you is who is “we” with the charity to do it for free and make a substantial loss doing it?
we = DEH = the people who have to collect it and pile it in the dump anyway. Just crush it and use it for fill. The cost justification is that it means less stuff going into the dump. (Same as paying to ship off the other recycling we can’t reuse locally. This stuff doesn’t make money but it makes a better quality of life.) This isn’t rocket science but it does require a ‘national interest’ decision that goes against ‘entrenched interests’ & lethargy.