Cayman’s biggest problem: Mount Trashmore
Beaumont Zodecloun writes: Dart should not have been the ‘selected bidder’ [for the waste-to-energy project] because Dart et al. have no experience with WTE or any facet of the problem. Here is my armchair analysis of the situation:
1. WTE works when the recyclables have been separated and the remaining waste has been sorted. What we have is decades of rotted, compacted organic waste with more than a little hazardous waste thrown in for seasoning. You can’t just shovel shit into a burner and turn it into energy.
2. There is every chance that dissembling Mount Trashmore would be hazardous to the neighbouring inhabitants downwind of this activity. We would need to hire trained and certified professionals to monitor the air and Trashmore itself prior to any activity and in situ monitoring as it progressed.
3. Dart wants to move Trashmore to a lined pit in Bodden Town. Lined pits always leak, and then there is the awkward thing of them filling up with water. This is a terrible solution for Bodden Town and an excellent solution for Mr Dart. Lined pits must be almost compost pits and the trash sorted, not just hauled and dumped.
4. Mr Dart would like to flatten it all out and ship in thousands of tons of Brac crushed bluff to cover it. That’s great, except that the organic material will continue to ferment and produce methane — which is why the Brac and Mount Trashmore frequently spontaneously combust. Milpitas, California, flattened out a landfill, layered it with fill and gravel and built a rural development over it. Fortunately for the future owners, it sparked and blew up before thousands of people moved in. Bad idea.
5. So, where are we at? We have to bid the thing with an eye toward WTE professionals who have done this before and are willing to come to Grand Cayman with their tools and actually assess the situation. Whatever they want, we pretty much have to pay it, or we are [expletive] doomed. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s going to cost a lot, but it’s a hell of a lot more important than any cruise port, or highway, or high school.
This is serious business that will determine our future. Please put it out for bid for industry professionals only, those people willing to put up a multimillion surety bond. They will come from the US and we will be glad.
Please. This is of utmost importance. Along with the bid should be an adjacent recycling centre and recycling system. No need to reinvent the wheel; just copy that which the UK does.
This comment was posted in response to Public to pick up $17.7M tab for failed ReGen deal.
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Category: Environmental Health, Health, Viewpoint
What a load of rubbish!
Quit your trash talk!
I have a feeling Mr. Dart would have hired someone with experience on WtE – not Sally from accounts
wouldn’t you like that industry professional on the front end for the bidding process on such a gigantic and important capital project?
Don’t sell Sally from accounts short; she has had to put up with all the knee deep crap necessary to make a company work, and probably knows more than anyone about it.
Point is, shouldn’t we be awarding bids to actual companies who have a history of successfully mitigating landfills, waste management and WTE?
Caymans biggest problem is being run by corrupt, ill-educated, self-serving idiots.
This.
That fact, combined with the fact that they are funded by unscrupulous, ultra-wealthy foreigners with zero concern for our island or its people, means that we are largely screwed. We’re doing what we can to fix it with this upcoming election, but I guess we’ll see if money talks as much as they say.
Yes, that and they are subversively, illegitimately and surreptitiously owned and controlled by the likes of Dart et al.
Yes, that and the fact that Cayman’s ‘providers’ of a supposed ‘good governance’, and the entirety of Cayman’s supposed justice system, is more concerned with keeping up appearances than demonstrating a willingness and/or an ability to provide for and/or deliver said supposed good governance beyond the parameters of their own interests and their own agenda.
Yes, that and that the fact that the system of governance in and of the Cayman Islands is based upon the fallacy of a viable and sustainable democracy which is within itself the root cause facilitative factor which has spawned, facilitated, and promulgated the institutionalized corruption of the Cayman Islands from the outside in and the inside out.
Fine but 1, 2, 3 and 4 were never part of the plan so not sure what this opinion piece is trying to actually say.
And as to 5 who is going to come to a small Caribbean island without a local partner. Surprisingly we didn’t have anyone here that had any experience in WTE so we always needed outside help, having them partner with someone that has done plenty of things here already didn’t seem like the worst plan.
Government at least got some remediation done which is more than has ever happened before. It all fell apart in the last year as government could t make any decisions other than needing a new school at the expense of finishing regen. I personally would have preferred they finished regen. But now we need to find a new dump as well as the one in GT.
Spot on, Dart was never the answer. We need real experts to handle that mess.
“Dart should not have been the ‘selected bidder’ [for the waste-to-energy project] because Dart et al. have no experience with WTE or any facet of the problem.”
Well, yes and no. I think Dart came here in the 90’s and at that stage probably didn’t know much of anything about property development, hotels, liqor distribution, schools, etc. Definitely knew about avoiding his pal Uncle Sam. Probably was up to date on chemical formulas for polystyrene or whatever. Fairly clued up on sovereign debt. But anything else? Unlikely.
Even today, odds are that you wouldn’t want Ken or any of his top execs at Dart to be running your liqor store or making decisions about how to fold the towels in the penthouse at the Ritz.
But you would want their money.
They have so much money, effectively as close to bottomless supplies of it as you can imagine, that they can become ‘experts’ overnight in any industry – including WTE – by contracting-in hugely experienced and respected industry leaders and partners, likely self-financing (which would have to be the absolute golden ticket to all of Darts enterprises) and providing extraordinary depths of personnel and logistic support to anything they want to do.
So yes, Dart hasn’t much of a clue about WTE. But the special entity/group he will have financed to do the Dump thing will be more qualified than you sir.
Not defending Dart, he couldn’t care less what any of us are thinking about him. But don’t be naive to think they do one single thing without being surrounded by industry leaders and probably sounding out multiple voices before settling on a direction. And then they throw buckets of greenbacks at it. Imagine them standing on top of the Dump and just emptying buckets of money into it. They did. They can. They will again. Because they dont’ have to answer to anyone but themselves. And they keep making even more of it!
The more i think about it, the more envious i’m becoming.
Interesting. And don’t forget that Dart has as much of an interest as the rest of us in improving the dump if (as must surely be the case) he supports Cayman’s development and future.
He supports his future. Not the same thing.
Is it?
The dump remaining in plain view in the thinnest part of the island, while leaking pollutants in the north sound is ridiculous.
The question is what is in the interest of Cayman, not Dart or the 5 people in Bodden town with political connections objecting to the move.
Try it mate. The whole of BT against the idea not just 5. And anyone with an iota of sense on island logistics and infrastructure would know this. How convenient that they also want to extend EE Arterial and build a cargo port in Breakers now that Daddy D and certain politically connected people own most of the surrounding land. Only thing getting properly lined is those pockets, the rest of the island (not just BT) gets shafted.
This comment is silly for a number of reasons, the plan was never to literally move the dump to Bodden Town, as in take material from the existing dump and truck it to Bodden town to re-dump it.
It was to cap the landfill in town as it is – then create a new landfill in Bodden Town in lieu of finding an actual solution to the problem which would be the dictionary definition of kicking the can down the road for multiple reasons
1. Bodden Town is the fastest growing residential district on the Islands the interests of Bodden Town go far past ‘5 people’, West Bay is basically fully built and developed, George Town is being increasingly bought out by businesses and rich landowners, basically all large housing developments and general infrastructure expansion over the next 15-25 years will be in Bodden Town hence the furore to try and get the EWA built so that developers can carve up more land that is currently inaccessible in BT which is the real reason that road is being pushed – it has nothing to do with traffic, nor will it alleviate traffic in any way.
2. Instead of 1 massive leaking environmental catastrophe we would be creating a second one in Bodden Town, who does that serve? How is creating another hazard and leaving the current existing one in place do anything other than further contaminate the island.
3. The future of Cayman is going to be based on how well we develop and maintain the land that still exists to be developed specifically Bodden Town, we need to learn from the mistakes that were made in GT and WB, there needs to be a solid plan for development, including planning for future growth not a ramshackle workable for today set of approvals that will be congested and clogged within a few years. We need services and businesses decentralised from GT and spread more evenly across the islands, we need a good blend of residential and commercial areas so that not all people are flooding the streets at the same time going in the same direction causing massive jams and pileups, and most importantly these plans need to be laid by people who care about ALL of Cayman, not by persons trying to ruin one a new area because one area is already been polluted which appears to be your primary motivation.
The Danish have figured it out. Why haven’t we?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amager_Bakke
As have many other first world jurisdictions including Japan, Germany, Sweden and others. We haven’t because we have all the wrong players making the decisions.
IMHO, the Danish, Japan, and many other countries figured it out because they started clean; they had multi-layered recycling for many decades, leaving primarily the organic waste behind. All of these nations devised a method and protocols for burning/reburning those wastes to create energy.
imho, we don’t have that. We have a mostly homogenous compaction of all manner of waste, the most compact and unburnable at the bottom. We really, really need creative industry professionals to come and bail us out of this mess, and whatever it costs it will be worth it, because the alternative is to let it reach critical mass, where we start causing cancer clusters and other related diseases.
To me, this is the very most pressing issue in Grand Cayman. I believe that any politician who doesn’t directly address this is either kicking the can down the road, or not paying attention.
….or doesn’t give a damn if not lining pockets…
Florida has plenty of Mt Trashmores all with lined pits and I have not heard of leakage problems. The best solution is to revert to the Bodden Town location where there’s plenty of swamp land.It’s time they took their turn. It would have happened years ago if the PPM had not interfered by having their BT candidates promising they would dump the dump if they were elected.
That’s a cool anecdotal story. Would you care to provide a citation? I can certainly counter it with valid research.
I personally don’t know much about WTE, but I seriously doubt an island with “only” 100,000 people produces enough trash to make this a viable solution. This will become a bigger problem once we start recycling & sorting our refuse better.
what? how would it it become a bigger problem?
Stay in your armchair
Quite the contrary. Once we begin genuine recycling, that filters out many layers of common waste — plastics, glass, even paper and cardboard — and leaves much less bulk to be burned to convert to energy. You have to understand that not all matter is appropriate to convert into energy.
Once we start recycling and sorting, the problem will stop growing, and we can reach a more manageable solution.
Less than 20% of landfill waste is from households. Construction and industrial comprises 80%, and not going to ever be sorted. Recycling was invented by the plastics and oil and gas industries as a way to placate household consumers on single use plastics. It was promoted by petrostates. Sure, we can all lend our bit towards refusing items, reducing household consumption, reusing things, and recycling where possible, but we must realise that this extra noble effort forms just a tiny slice of the total waste issue. Many of the items we genuinely wish could be recycled, can’t.
Right, so we should just say hell with it because our wee recycling efforts don’t make a bit of difference, even though it makes a massive difference in nearly every. other. country. in the world. BTW, you misspelled some of your fake British spelling.
Made you look. Very telling.
You don’t have any idea how much it costs and the volumes of waste required to run a recycling facility and operation. The initial outlay is tens of millions and who are you going to sell the recycled plastic, glass or pulp too? No one will buy it cause you are shipping it at very high cost – it’s cheaper to get it elsewhere. Jeez Beaumont, I appreciate you are trying but you are way off the mark with everything!
I have looked into it myself. At this point in time, we could only break even, after having purchased glass crushers, specific plastic bags for the glass, and specific plastic bags (different than the glass ones) for the aluminium cans. Miami recyclers don’t need our recyclables, but will accept them at a certain price per ton. Thus, I believe we could break even costs-wise even with the shipping.
I want our government to take that risk, because it is good for all the islands and our waste management. If the government has to subsudise it, then fine.
I believe that this hasn’t been done full scale, because so far, nobody’s MP’s brother’s uncle’s dog’s sister can make a huge profit from it with their new-brand shiny recycling company.
I am asking questions. I hope you join me in asking questions. This is important. Maybe I don’t get everything right, but at least we’re all now talking about it instead of pretending the looming doom of the problem doesn’t exist. I can live with that.
There are modular WTE plants that would be viable to divert some of the waste. $100-500K for one.
France has modular nuclear reactors too that provide clean, safe and reliable energy but that will never be permitted here.
As I sat in my backyard in Northside today, some parrots flew in after a trip to gt. Through their squaks, they told me: if this dump situation isn’t sorted by July 1st, let us temporarily move everyone to East End and burn mt trashmore to the ground as it normally tries to do to itself.
getreddy
Then start building 2 more cancer hospitals.
With so little available space in any of the three landfills, it’s critical that we sort trash better, recycling what we can, barging any noxious materials to La Ceiba or Santiago (for services rendered), compact what isn’t noxious into blocks, and deep six them to create new deep marine habitat. Private homeowners should be paying for every second bag of trash. Hotel/Commercial should have mandatory recycling programs. Dart, one of the great legacy polluter chemical families of the 20th Century, shouldn’t be anywhere near waste management responsibilities.
Why private homeowners?
Because they don’t currently contribute a dime to household collections.
Actually we all contribute. It was included into the import duty costs some years ago. So in fact we are pre-paying for garbage collection. This is why roadside dumping is so immensely stupid.
I believe a cruise ship pier might be the answer. Each cruise ship that docks at the pier has to agree to take 5 truckloads of garbage from Mt. Trashmore out with them.
Five truckloads of garbage is probably only a small increase on the amount of garbage they generate on a typical one week cruise.
After 20 years Mt. Trashmore is flattened, the cruise ships are happy, and we have made the best of a bad situation.
Obvious satire aside, ideas like this sound awesome until you realize that they go a few miles offshore and dump all their trash into international waters, so it pollutes our coral, our beaches, and ends up right back on our shores. Cruise tourism is an absolute plague on our planet.
thats not possible… cruise ships compact and discharge their garbage to shore or commutate it and discharge to sea. The room for processing said garbage is about the size of your living room and they have to sort everything before its processed.
I’m not arguing for or against here in regards to proceeding or not proceeding with the Dart solution, but reading this I actually had to check the date on the article to see if this was from many years ago before any information was available, but it’s recent.
That said it therefore seems pretty obvious that the writer doesn’t actually understand the details of the solution that Dart consortium proposed and was the basis of the initial deal that was signed nor the experience of the consortium that won the bid in regards to WTE. There isn’t much that’s correct here.
The problem with the Dart solution I would imagine, is that unlike the cruise piers, our leaders would not be receiving personal rewards for proceeding with the project.
In my opinion, the Dart solution doesn’t fix the problem for the majority of Caymanians. It fixes the problem for Mr. Dart. Dissembling Mount Trashmore and all its toxic layers and moving that to a residential area is a pretty shitty and shortsighted solution. Our MP’s are wealthy, and therefore don’t have to get their hands dirty with these squeamish issues, but to just dump the crap somewhere else is a terrible solution and extremely NONsustainable. Tell me you get that at least.
The plan was never to “move” the existing landfill. The plan was to cap the existing landfill and greatly improve the recycling and separation of waste at the existing site and everything remaining would be put into the WTE facility. I have been involved in WTE facilities in the UK and I never thought this was a good solution for Cayman. You have to commit to a fixed size facility that may take 5 years to come online. We are so far behind that we haven’t even started the discussion on carbon capture. In the UK we are spending 10’s of millions on research to send carbon from WTE facilities to the spent offshore wells in the North Sea.
In my opinion we need the fully lined and engineered BT facility with recycling and methane recapture to power a small scalable power generating facility.
Please enlighten me. I’m more concerned with the truth than being right.
Waste to energy is the answer, but I would wager that CUC and common sense will be an obstacle.