UPM dumps ‘untenable’ Dart deal for ReGen
(CNS): The Cayman Islands Government is going through the process of withdrawing from the deal it signed with a Dart-led consortium to take on the country’s waste management problem and the construction of a waste-to-energy facility. What had become the UPM’s worst kept secret was finally revealed in parliament on Thursday when Sustainability Minister Katherine Ebanks-Wilks confirmed that almost 2,500 days after the previous PPM-led government signed the last-minute deal with the islands’ wealthiest developer, the CIG has come clean that the talks to reach a final deal have failed.
Answering a question from former premier Wayne Panton, the previous sustainability minister who was the first to tell the country that there were significant challenges with the preliminary agreement signed by the Progressives just a few weeks before the election, Ebanks-Wilks revealed that the government was pulling out and “taking the necessary steps” to end it and start all over again because the project was “untenable”.
In response to Panton’s question and before she gave the full statement, she said, “Achieving a modern, sustainable and affordable solid waste management solution remains a top priority for the government.” But she said that this deal was unaffordable.
Dart was picked as the preferred bidder in October 2017, but discussions that began then on the ReGen waste management project rolled on for almost seven years. After the PPM signed a pre-deal, Dart was allowed to begin remediating the actual dump and began covering up Mount Trashmore, as the dump is known. Many saw this as a major mistake because it removed the government’s main leverage in the negotiations.
After she took over as the minister in October last year, following the Cabinet coup that ousted Panton, the novice minister was faced with a longstop deadline on 30 November to reach a deal on the complex and troubled project.
In her full statement, she told the parliament that there were still outstanding issues that had not been agreed upon that would have prevented the parties from being able to meet the deadline, so a new date would have to be agreed. At that point, Cabinet believed it needed to review the deal before setting a new date for the financial close, but there were some major unresolved issues, including risk, liability, indemnity and problems with insurance, as well as the matter of local company control.
The power purchase agreement between Dart, CUC and the government regarding the electricity generated by burning the rubbish was also problematic and protracted. As a result, that element had been taken out of the talks to allow the ministry and Dart to focus on the rest of the deal’s costs and other problems.
“Essentially… if we closed on the project agreement, we did not have a customer secured — the only customer on the island,” she said. Closing without that being resolved could leave the government unable to secure a competitive price per kilowatt hour, Ebanks-Wilks explained. “So the government would enter into a contract to sell energy, and the only client to buy the energy, CUC, had not yet signed the agreement.”
The minister said the government had always anticipated that the energy costs in the power purchase deal would be around 15 cents per kilowatt hour, but that had not been agreed. The review by Cabinet revealed a long list of challenges going all the way back to the original business case, she noted.
Given all of that, she said, Cabinet had decided it was time to consider terminating the project agreement. Explaining the potential issues relating to that, she confirmed there were no liabilities on the parties over the existing deals.
“We need to find a more affordable option for the future,” Ebanks-Wilks said. Pointing out how big an impact the deal would have on the country’s budget every year, she said the CIG could risk breaching compliance with the Framework for Fiscal Responsibility if it didn’t raise fees to cover this project’s cost, and given the current rate of inflation, this would be too much.
“This decision by Cabinet was not taken lightly,” she said, adding that the government remained committed to finding a solution. “We need to move away from landfilling as our main method of dealing with solid waste as it is essential to the continued sustainable development of the country.”
It was apparent that the solution, while necessary, had to be affordable now and in the future, but the problems were rooted in the original deal signed by the Progressives, she said. Since the years of rigorous negotiations had failed to solve a litany of problems, Cabinet had decided that the goal was to find a way out of the deal that was agreeable to both the CIG and Dart.
Echoing what Panton had repeatedly stated when he was the sustainability minister, Ebanks-Wilks said that the deal left by the PPM was far from a full deal that merely required a few loose ends to be tied up. Given how much of the proposed contract was unresolved, she said it was no wonder it had taken so long to try to agree a deal.
The deadline had been repeatedly pushed back to try to move it forward, but it became clear that the costs and risk for the largest project ever undertaken by the CIG were “untenable”. Ebanks-Wilks said, “The decision was based on facts and figures.”
She accepted that people would be worried that a major investment to this point would go to waste, but that was not necessarily the case. The remediation work on the old dump, which cost around $23 million, was a separate and important part of the overall clean-up, and the government had learned a lot, which will position it well for a new bid, she said.
The government is now reviewing the policy and the original strategic outline case for it, but she said the CIG would be in a good position to manage a much more successful tender next time.
With the current waste input, the Department of Environmental Health has said that it can use the landfill for another five or six years, provided that there are no major hurricanes. However, she said the government was well aware that it needed to apply the lessons learned and tender a revised project that would meet government needs, and it would begin the tender process as soon as possible.
Panton noted the complexities around the project and asked why the government believes a new tender would cost any less. The minister was unable to fully explain this but said that, given all the concerns, the CIG was going to end the project.
Chris Saunders asked the government to release the value-for-money report conducted by the auditor general. In response, Ebanks-Wilks wrongly suggested that it was not Cabinet who could decide whether or not to release it.
Joey Hew, who was the minister in charge of the project when the PPM-led government signed the deal and is also the brother of CUC’s president, asked about the problems with the CUC element. Ebanks-Wilks answered that while there were problems with that aspect, it was by no means the only issue that had sunk the negotiations.
Hew also raised concerns that the landfill would not last another five to six years. He asked if the government was considering a second site for landfilling and how it planned to manage the terrible smell throughout the area. Ebanks-Wilks said the government was confident it could get at least five years from the existing dump and, in the meantime, the dump would be properly managed.
Opposition Leader Roy McTaggart asked the minister about the final projected cost of the ReGen deal with Dart, saying it was impossible to understand how it had gone from $620 million to $2 billion, as has been suggested.
However, the minister said she was mindful of revealing that, given that a new tender process was about to begin. She said that the government would release as much information as it could going forward.
See the minister deliver the full statement below on CIGTV:
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Category: Environmental Health, Health
How many more consultants and lawyers are they going to pay again to realize that the Dump will only operate as a processing center. Cayman doesn’t have the population density or natural gas for it to be a fully functional waste to energy Recyling plant. Bare minimum population would be 250,000 and God Help us if it nears half that. Have a cohesive processing plant that sorts recyclables and have and incinerator. There are machines that can remove the steel wiring from tires and save the reusable rubber. The initial Dart proposal was never going to work, I’m just so damn disappointed that the dump has been an ongoing issue for several administrations that keeps getting kicked up the proverbial road.
7 years ago I Googled waste to energy and in 10 minutes figured out it couldn’t work here. You need at least 250,000 people to get it to work, and it needs Natural Gas to fire it. Typical government thing to spend 1.5 million to get same information. Because of our make up of trash the only common sense thing to do is single stream recycling. 90% can be recycled.
Kudos to Sustainability Minister Katherine Ebanks-Wilks for tossing on the trash heap what apparently was becoming an increasingly prohibitively expensive proposition.
It’s important to note that the design and development of a waste-to-energy plant in Cayman is not an insurmountable challenge. These plants are not only feasible but also successfully operating on a global scale.
Have the planners and WTE partners investigated plants currently operating and in construction stages elsewhere during all this time? I know that Palm Beach County and Miami-Date have WTE plants. What is the status of those “neighboring” plants? What about New York City and Chicago? What is the status there?
I DO NOT understand why the WTE partners are not looking to “Best Practices” and successful operations to find affordable solutions.
This is Cayman! CIG has no interest in looking at promising projects elsewhere. We elected a bag of nuts!
Because Dart has their fingers all over this project. Why must everything go thru Dart all the time? Does anyone care that they are bringing in all kinds of foreign contractors to work on their latest project when local contractors are available and qualified? Why is it that one contractor always “assists” Dart with bringing in these foreign companies when this contractor himself is a foreign national? This love affair with Dart being the one and only really must stop. Seems they have old honey CMR child on the books now as she sure is spewing loads of propaganda. Lets get some bids from the companies who do the job and cut out middleman Dart with all the bloated staff.
Just back door Dart like they do to local companies all the time and go directly to the real waste people. Of course Dart/DECCO have lots of trash experts on their payroll. Enough of the Dart Group being our savior, they are only looking out for Dart and buy us dummies with some trinkets and sweeties.
I agree 100% this has been done in the UK as well.
https://enfinium.co.uk/
You can’t fix what you don’t understand.
Sometimes I wonder whenever Isee all this wasting of funds on consultants and contracts if it wouldn’t be better to just sell the damn Dump to DART and have him build a dump and the government uses the 2% we now pay for it as a yearly feee so that we get a proper landfill and one that is run appropriately and built to the highest standards.
It has been some 30 years that we have been trying to get something done with with dump and millions of our hard earned dollars have been wasted by each successive government. It is time that this wasting of money stops and we get a proper landfill that we can afford.
DART offers no in-house expertise. DART’s family legacy isn’t for remediating global dumps and landfills. The fortune was made creating 20th Century product lines that continue to create superfund contamination zones. They were Dioxin and PCB fuel merchants, which is why they are based in the Cayman Islands hiding their money.
Also known as styrofoam and I’m sure you’ve never used any.
Maples is laughing all the way to the mufuggin bank! They billed CIG MILLIONS for this.
Good for them; CIG is littered with elected clowns – the electorate is to blame.
while I agree with you just look at the political landscape, there really isn’t anyone with knowledge, common sense and integrity signing up to roll in the filth of politics. the last person I can thin k of with truly innovative ideas was Bo Miller.
8:52 here – I agree with you, sadly.
Can kicked again? Wow, never saw that coming…
Why do I feel like capping this bottomless cesspool is a danger in itself? All of that seepage ain’t gonna stop seeping. (Unfortunately, uneducated ignorants never knew you had to line it in the first place)
It’s a bubbling cesspit that capping it will blow like a volcano, similar to the tire thing. There is no perfect fix for this. Just make sure the solution is for Caymanians, not those with their hands continually in XXX’s pocket.
There are methane gas vents on the hill that will hopefully vent accumulation of explosive gases. The best permanent cure for this storage eyesore is to shovel it into awaiting barges and deliver it to a neighbouring third world country that has land area it accept it. Honduras, Haiti, Cuba are locales that come to mind. We could send all our dump waste elsewhere if we were organised.
If anyone thinks that Wayne and Kathy are not cooking this up together you better open your eyes to the decepton of Panton.
PS. Where are the district composting sites he promised?
@5:49pm Wayne and Kathy would be total opposites on this, afraid to say..Wayne had a bunch of degenerates with him that wanted everything for themselves and counted care less about the environment and that includes Kathy.
There are only a handful of Waste to Energy Engineering firms. None of them will bid next time around as word gets around about CIGs poor track record of handling of Public Private Partnership projects.
It is clear to me that this project was too complicated for the UPM grass roots government
Cayman how can we expect politicians with no education or business experience to run our government effectively. Especially when they believe they don’t need advice.
It is my understanding that a formidable negotiation team comprising of a local top law firm a member of the big four and a highly reputable UK company was established to advise the Government. It would be interesting to hear from these consultants.
lmfao you keep telling yourself that. They are only just now beginning to salivate at the sound of this bell.
The question that needs asking us not being asked and ie how much did PPM want or get from the deal and how much was there to give up to the UPM swallows to get the deal approved. Rest assured John public this aappect was certainly a deal breaker.
There was no deal or winning proposal submitted, only an agreement to agree. What inducement was dangled for the PPM-led former Cabinet to betray the trust of the citizens of the Cayman Islands? Are we going to so-easily forget that?
Focus your disgust on the PPM-led Unity Cabinet that went outside of procurement laws, and agreed to a deal to make a deal without understanding the CUC license. CUC is the only company that is licensed to sell electricity. Dart wanted us to pay to have them build and run the plant with our own money, then receive $0.15 per kWh burning our “free” trash fuel and reselling that power to CUC – which was both unworkable for licensing and too expensive for end-consumers. Feel free to submit a bid next time. The major WTE companies weren’t invited to bid.
So CUC just wanted to keep their monopoly then
Of course. Why would they not? It would not make sense if they did otherwise. Darn but the lack of logic here is sorry. It doesn’t mean that CIG had to go with their wishes – they could have grown some bal.s and said NO! But don’t castigate a business for looking out for itself (Many, many posters on CNS promote the viewpoint that Cayman needs to look after Cayman, which I agree with. But CUC should be acknowledged that they ‘look out for CUC’.) Double standards elude the Cayman electorate.
OfReg gives Water Authority a pass. Water Authority is aware of the toxins emanating from their sewage plant next to the dump.
Injected 250ft into the ground, it’s out of sight and out of their concern after that. However it’s also out of their control. It could be pissing out the sides of Cayman’s “Swiss Cheese” like subsurface lithography poisoning our coastal waters and adding to coral degradation, sargassum growth, etc. No one has ever added markers to the sewage plant and monitored for their presence in coastal waters. Heads in the sand as usual.
What “toxins” would sewage contain which a human didn’t already ingest..?? You mean natural H2S gas? The same gas emitted by mangrove wetlands that daddy Dart tore down to build his Monopoly town?
If you’re a dartbot and pushing their agenda to further raise his land value, say that and stop acting like you don’t have ulterior motives. The dump and plant were there long before Dart showed up.
Land value by promixity is the ONLY reason Dart gave a damn about sorting the dump – you dumb if you think they’d care if Mt Trashmore was tucked away in Collier’s wilderness, EE.
You do realize that 90% of your shit elsewhere in Grand Cayman goes untreated and straight into a septic tank which releases those same gases in neighborhoods? You do realize that the dump is surrounded by monitoring wells? Sick and tired of unna farting out opinions instead actually speaking truth.
You obviously don’t know what other nasties get dumped into the sewer system.
.. which would otherwise go straight into the ground/air right in your local neighborhood regardless.
The sewer system only serves 7MB corridor, or perhaps 5% of the human waste generated daily on GCM. No such facility in the Sister Islands.
Again, dart bot wants the dump and plant gone / moved so Daddy Dart’s land value skyrockets. I get it.
Barge to Haiti or Honduras. There are lots of 3rd world countries that would pay to receive it, and we could reduce Mt Trashmore to a small short-term warehouse, flush with the surrounding industrial park landscape.
But Dart was going to cap it and create an amusement park on top or something…or did we just get fooled and have our time and money wasted again because all Dart wanted to do was reduce the smell enough to press go on 10 projects in the surrounding area, hmm…
Who cares what DART wants to do, they blew it.
Marl Road Sandy really seems to care as she is crying all about her boss daddy Dart being fired.
Silly comment.
The City of Toronto sends volumes of trash to Michigan. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was going to send nuclear waste to little town in Texas. This stuff gets reshuffled all the time. We are already supposed to be sending our “recycling” concentrate off island (not that anyone checks this).
8:32, Toronto stopped sending volumes of trash to Michigan in 2010.
Also, Bernie never was involved with sending nuclear waste to Texas.
You misunderstood the context of what he was saying.
Yup – Misinformation galore! Shoot Cayman, get your head out of the gutter.
Sure, send it all to Haiti so it can wash back up in our beaches for permit holders to pick up for residency points. Great idea.
Nobody said dump it on their beaches or river gullies.
It is the failure to deal with our own waste that got us into this fix. Now you want to ship it to other places?
Failure. Same as moving instead of mitigating the dump. Failure. Failure of logic.
Though we often witness leadership cognition failures, we can’t ignore that waste export is common in the waste management disposal chain of custody. Most big urban centers with footprint constraints, sort and export to far away. We should consider doing the same, rather than always trying to reinvent the wheel locally via cronyism and predictable expensive CIG administrative failures. It should definitely be part of the solution matrix.
However, Cayman is certainly not a “big urban center.” We could easily handle our waste if we had educated, competent ministers, that want to look out for the best welfare of our citizens. Sadly, we continually elect uneducated, incompetent, immoral Ministers – the blame is with our electorate. We get what we elect – Self-responsibility. Maybe in the next election we will have better choices and better results………… – Nah – this is Cayman, we elect clowns and wait for the circus!
Another glorious day for the civil service……time for more awards franz!
What does the civil service have to do with the absence of a sensible deal from a developer?
The story goes back 15 years. Some of the people who know why your question is misguided are no longer around. The lack of accountability, and the nature and extent of it, is horrifying.
1:15. Please get the help you desperately need.
1:16 Forest Gump comes to mind. Stupid is as stupid does. Poor you.
mount thrashmore…the perfect monument to the failures and incompetence of caymanian mla’s and their attitude towards the environment.
You do realise that Dart was proposing to incinerate the garbage, right? That’s what WTE involves, plus a 20 story smokestack.
You do realize that Dart was responding to an RFP right? Not proposing anything.
RFP = Request for Proposal
(not to be confused with RFQ = Request for Quote)
Therefore to reply to an RFP you would have to propose a plan for consideration.
So what is your point. All WTE plants are built that way
Dart only bid as per CIG specifications.
True in theory, we don’t know what DART was proposing exactly. OP was worried about the environment. WTE incineration is not a clean or even healthy solution for our people or the environment.
Except he never wanted it on his own doorstep and looks like he played the waiting game and got what he wanted.
You play games with Vulture Capitalists – your dead body will get eaten on the roadside! Cayman, you chose your future (you chose unwisely). Their lawyers are better than yours; their experience is better than yours; their vision for what they want is better than yours; their accountants are better than yours. There is no ‘learning and doing better next time’, the game is decided; only the last moves are to be played out. Sadly, this was all self-inflicted; I cry for the Cayman I used to know and love.
Ohhhh scary…the truth is, their lawyers, advisors, and staff (those they can retain) aren’t as clever as you might think. They often loose on their wagers, expensive errors litter their project history, and tough façade is vulnerable to fact verification. Nobody in Cayman needs to be afraid of this spiritless bully, and we certainly don’t need to seek their “help” with anything. There are higher-ranking Forbes billionaires, resident in Cayman, that could easily gobble DART and spit them out if they wanted to.
Hope voters are ‘taking the necessary steps’ to have a clean sweep of these moronic, unprogressive. repetitive members of government who are ‘untenable’and a shameful detriment to the Cayman Islands. Get rid!
The smell is from the solid waste ponds upwind of the dump. They aren’t going anywhere. Why doesn’t Joey Hew know that?
‘cos his don’t stink.
Joey mentioned the dump smell last night in Parliament
Joey is also full of crap. He is their boy and happy to sing their songs as long as the contracts keep coming given his pecuniary interests
Joey Who is an uneducated, compromised political hack that gets rewarded to spout all sorts of nonsense from his handlers in the development game
All you have to do with that donkey is follow the money and contracts to understand who he really represents…
Not sure I understand what the LCCL issue is with respect to a specialist waste to energy construction contractor etc. Does CIG think a majority Caymanian owned constuction company can build a waste to energy facility?
Yes. And they can. They can bring in expertise.
Just like Dart was going to do, yet the immigrants that troll this site refuse to acknowledge their hypocrisy.
The legal, engineering and accounting firms involved are the winners – having billed millions in fees for this project.
There is absolutely no way that Mt Trashmore will last another four to five years and there will be a major hurricane!
Take the Dart offer of the land in the district of Bodden Town (the land is actually quite a ways inland from Bodden Town itself).
Construct a properly lined, common-sense facility and scrap any waste-to-energy plan (which is not likely economically feasible and needlessly complicates this).
yep ..but we can’t upset small minded backward bodden towners…..zzzzzzzzzzzzz
They’re keeping Jon Jon in good suits. He won’t allow that.
didn’t ppm run and win on not creating a new facility in BT area because they would mismanage it?
I hope that when a new solution is arrived at the country choses a partner with the experience to deliver.
Huh? How that gonna happen?
Some politically connect guy in Bodden Town probably has the expertise. Either him or the guys who got the CCTV contract. Eric will figure it out.
yet the government can justify the craziness and the some $50M spent in the Julliana-ville, sorry, i mean The Brac, for a unnecessary sport facility thats being sold to us as a ‘school’
But of course not the heaping trash mound thats been in talks for the better part of 10+ years and the only people that did anything in that time and have it looking better is dart lol nice news here
Its safe to say that the gov will not fix this; current gov nor any in the future as it seems at this rate since its the same hooligans cycled through since i was a kid lmao
Sell the dump to Dart. Take the land he previously offered in Bodden Town that he would line and prepare for a proper waste disposal site.
It is only when government got the hair brained idea that they were sitting on a gold mine and could make money off the dump that this fiasco has happened.
Shut the dump and seal it all up. Turn it into a park. And make the old deal with Dart.
Problem solved.
No different than when they thought they were sitting on another cash cow, the mountain of old tires which they then had to pay to be removed to the US.
There was a guy maybe 10 years ago, that had an industrial sized machine that would grind up the tires separate the rubber from the steel wiring. We could’ve used the recycled rubber to make fill for parks, tracks, and to make roads but government would not waive the duties.
Joey was right out front and deep in the middle of the Dart-CUC-Regen deal. Surely he should be able to educate the current Minister on all the details.
As reported on many times on CNS, the PPM deal to make a deal was a blank page without any substance or detail. This government is correct to reject it, and to rethink its relationship with this developer. They need to audit the NRA deal duty waiver exhaustion, and send them a collection invoice for back-duty, plus interest.
All good work done by Joey gone to waste. ( excuse the pun)
Where do we go from here? Probably talk to suddenly incorporated company owned by a politician,
Joey Who?
Hahahahah what good work was done by Joey exactly? Signing an incomplete “contract” with zero details other than that it would put our future generations in debt to the largest foreign vulture capitalist on the island? Yeah, that was super brilliant.
I agree. Procrastination is the thief of time. I list but a few.
East west Arterial Road
North Church Street link road to Eastern Avenue
Ernie Smatts land
Down town renovations now a complete disaster
Christmas soon come.
How come Jersey in the Channel Islands has had one for years, and even Tortola (they need to upgrade their one though ) Cayman is so backward with its waste management. Put it in and make CUC accept the electricity or remove their Licence, otherwise Goverment need to take control of the grid and set up their own electricity company.
You understand that you pay for this electricity, right? It gets bought by CUC and then passed on directly to you.
You realize that you have to pay god your garbage somehow don’t you. Right now it’s free. If can’t stay free.
It’s free? You mean apart from the shed loads of money we all pay to CIG for import duty on everything that we consume on the island? We have a high rate of indirect taxation here – the problem is the government fritters it away on personal projects and incompetent state owned enterprises like the turtle farm and Cayman an airways. And of course lavish salarys for MLAs and gold plated medical and pension cover for civil servants. How much do you think garbage collection costs, versus say $50m for a vanity project on the Brac or a free private jet terminal for Dart and the billionaires?
Pay to have garbage removed, not free!
CUC enjoys a 20+ year supplier monopoly on their renewed energy license on Grand Cayman. DART wanted to skim out $0.15/kw on the free energy we supplied, in the incinerator facility we would pay to build for them. That $0.15/kw would then get sold to and marked up by CUC and resold back to us at $0.30, twice current rates. That would make us the most expensive energy market on Earth, save for some very remote end of the Earth science stations.
Mate, if you think Dart only wanted $0.15 I have about 29 Dart projects to pitch you 🤣
100% mark up from CUC, for doing nothing, so CUC!
We have all paid for the national grid through our bills through the years.
Remember after Ivan we all paid to repair the grid on our bills, as CUC was underinsured, so they could pass more money to the shareholders.
No surprise here. Good win for Dart, the landfill has been capped and he doesn’t want the waste to energy plant next to Camana Bay anyway. CIG now haven’t got the land to expand the present landfill so will have to relocate!! CIG are complete muppets! Interesting to see if CIG try and compulsory acquire Dart’s surrounding land….major legal battles on their way.
Exactly. Check mate. Mr D must be very happy indeed.
no one wins under the current arrangement….especially not dart…who is likely looking at legal challenge to cig incompetence
“She confirmed there were no liabilities on the parties over (termination of) the existing deals”.
Oh, well I trust that.
LOL he will win, laughing his backside off against these imbeciles! Just give me Paradise, fix it up for all to go dancing again n sit n watch the sunset..email me on….
With the new bypass planned to the East and all the development planned along it already, meabs a new landfill should be positioned in the center of Cayman.
Bodden Town remains the best location, an they have happily sent their garbage to GT for decades, so time to return the favor
Bidden Town looking like a dump now anyway!
You don’t like Jamaica?
The latest in the long list of epic failures on the part of the CI Government.
Incompetence at its worst.
Indeed and starting with Minister Wilk’s Chief Officer I’m sure.
She’s a hero.
This is delayed competence. Rejecting a deal to make a deal without a merit case, was the right call. Took awhile. Let’s also hope that whatever the former PPM-led signing parties may have agreed to privately, comes back to haunt them with the ACC.
The new landfill hills look more attractive every day. Imagine green hills on Grand Cayman. Maybe that’s why people are coming from Nepal. Building Cayman up as high as possible is the way to go. Once the current GT uplands are complete a new mountain area should be planned between Savannah and Bodden Town.
But since Dart has been the one “greening” the current dump, I suppose all that will stop now too.
Still next to his houses and school…
And hospital. And new health center. And overlooking the grand entrance to Camana Bay from the soon to be built airport bypass.
The Dump, Port and Airport are all things the Government have asked for proposals and signed MOU’s and then backed out. I believe all of these cost the Government Money to get out off. I am not sure why anyone would waste their time and money on proposals. The Government in power at the time will approve and sign an MOU and the new Government after them will cancel it.
Not exactly what happened here. Did you read the article? This deal was unworkable for the people of the Cayman Islands. Good call from André sitting-in for Juju.
The Deal was not unworkable. The new Government did not like it and did not do the work required to get it across the line. They missed the contract deadline. The costs then went through the roof. That’s what happened. Wayne should hang his head in shame.
I believe they backed out of the port and the airport MOU for the same reason.
correction. it costs US as its our hard earned the gov loves to waste so much (unintended pun).
Wayne Panton and Jennifer Ahearn’s legacies will be defined by the stinking shitheap to remain for all eternity.
9:20 am EXACTLY !!!
11:54, But I thought Sir Alden said a few weeks before the last election that it was all a done deal?
Think Sir Alden led us down the garden path.
Minister of Donkeys – is that you trying to deflect attention from your incompetence?
Alden’s legacy.
And the high schools are his folly.
Of course it was untenable. The expense and running cost were simply too high. Find a new location ( probably a disused quarry somewhere) and start properly preparing and lining it. Immediately start recycling of glass and metals, and all yard waste should be composted. Minimize generation of garbage and handle it in a safe, environmentally responsible and efficient manner.
This location should be in Honduras.
Or Jamaica!
if only it were that simple….
It really is that simple.
Only for the simple-minded.
No. If you are not trying to find a way to make tens of millions for yourself, putting our garbage (that cannot be economically recycled or composted) into a centrally located lined pit, allowing it to pile up, and then burying, capping and landscaping it, is literally the solution.
If that is not the case, do inform us why not.
It seems so very obvious, but no Government minister has the courage to do what is right regardless of losing popularity. What we need is a team of well educated new Ministers for the next Government who have made their money already, and really just want to do the right thing for this country. They cannot be bought or swayed. I am praying for this. Lord please deliver this for us! Cayman is crying out for it.
There is no one who has ‘made their money already’. No amount of money is enough in today’s Cayman and today’s world. As soon as you have real money, you want more money. And someone else always has more, always has a more impressive racket going on, always seems to be getting more for less than you are, and you want that, so you keep going, and going and going. The richer they are, the more likely they are to support vested interests and make decisions that hurt people. You want people who need the income from being a politician, because they can’t afford to get fired, so they are more responsive to public opinion.
not surprised all the back door dealings that went on with this so called project for 10 years! Where is the report on exactly how much money we have lost on this, because i can assure you it wasn’t Dart losing.
Sadly this is not a surprise. The lack of vision and action by successive governments to deal with waste management in Cayman is astounding. We can’t deal with a simple issue of crushing glass let alone a sophisticated project like WTE.
I think its time to abandon the gold-plated waste management plan, which is something we can’t afford with such a small population. Not enough of a critical mass to make the capital costs feasible.
Time to go with something more reasonable; something in between the current dump and bury, and a gold-plated waste-to-energy solution.
Yes, I too would like to live in a $15 million mansion behind the gates in Vista Del Mar, but then I have to be realistic.
can u immagine the monthly fees the govt will probably levy on us to maintain that? lord have mercy…
More like we’d be paying indirectly through every orifice in our bodies for the next one hundred years.
I can’t see another private party now willing to step up on such a financially risky investment. A private third party is only going to want to do this if there is a highly probable likelihood of long-term profitability, commensurate with the risk, especially for a party with no connection to Cayman.
Back to square one. This is a long, long, long way from ever getting done.
Don’t worry, the UDP/UPM Family & Friends Enrichment Program likely already has companies laying in wait for when this project is re-tendered.
If Dart couldn’t get this deal done, no one will, thanks to to the “Panton/Ahearn” legacies of ignorance, delays and stubbornness.
Burning this trash feedstock would have doubled our CUC bills, paying both DART and CUC, while we would still need to fund the operation via colossal DEH infrastructure spending. There was never anything in it for the public. There wasn’t even provision for air scrubbers on the chimney, or consideration of toxic fly ash waste. Glad this nonsense is finally put to bed.
Most likely double our cancer rates in a decade too.
More evidence that all of them are useless.
We could have had a modern landfill and recycling in the DISTRICT of Bodden Town years ago. I say district as everyone seemed to talk about it as if it would be right in the middle of the main residential areas, which it wasn’t.
So, we’ve wasted millions and continue to endanger the environment and people’s health.
But at least a few people have made some money on this farce so everything should be cool to keep stumbling along for a few more years at the current site.
Lined waste pits work in places with a very low water table. That is not the case anywhere on the island.
Do the pits leak? We are told they do not. What do you think happens with rain accumulation?
See the problem? Lined pits work best when they are layered with absorbtive soil layers, and covered over. Even then, they often ferment and form layers of flammable gasses.
The proposed Bodden Town district landfill is far from the simple solution that some people are claiming.
Big Daddy Dart is not going to be to happy with this decision. Sure seems funny that when a contractor bids a Dart job, the Dart team wants the cheap prices but when they charge the government then the sky is the limit as far as pricing goes. Where does all that extra money go?
I think you’re wrong. Dart will be very happy as it is highly probable that any new solution will have to be done elsewhere. Success.
Bingo!
If this doesn’t outline how inept this government is, nothing will.
To be fair, all administrations involved in the REGEN deal messed up from the start when they decided to go with Dart. It was bound to fail.