Visiting the Area Landfill While on Vacation. Know Anyone Who’s Done That?
Now you do.
Was there something wrong with the sand, the ocean or the Paradise Island resort? Nope. Or, our 3rd visit there over the past 3 years and looking for something different? Maybe.
On a walk near our hotel, I bumped into a friendly Bahamian. While chatting, something compelled me to ask about environmental challenges facing the Bahamian government. Yes, she said, asking if I’d heard about the fires at the Harold Road landfill–“the place that catches fire periodically.”
The 100-acre+ landfill is located on the island of New Providence. Ironic, eh? By the look of it, on fire with smoke darkening the skies overhead, something like Sheol or Gehenna could be a more apt name? Nearly a quarter million inhabitants reside on New Providence, 80 sq. mi. including the capitol of The Bahamas, Nassau. (Paradise Island, connected by 2 vehicular bridges, is a tale unto itself.)
The landfill fire pictured here occurred in January 2015. This and another, just several weeks later, are thought to have been set by an arsonist–scavengers, likely (rather than eco-terrorists). Multiple fires occurred at this landfill during the year. Fires can also arise spontaneously at landfills due to the so-called thermal runaway process.
The Nassau Guardian reported on 3/2/15: “Despite the lingering impact of smoke on large swaths of New Providence, the government has been satisfied with Renew Bahamas’ [the landfill operator] response to a series of fires as it ramps up efforts for its waste-to-energy recycling facility, according to Minister of the Environment and Housing Kenred Dorsett. Speaking with NB12 [a local news station], Dorsett said he is ‘fairly satisfied’ with Renew’s response to the fires, but said government is not considering compensation for residents surrounding the landfill area at this time, noting only that talks with area stakeholders are ongoing.”
The landfill operation was privatized back in May of 2014 under the management of Renew Bahamas which, among other claims, committed to rebuild the existing landfill which annual intake numbers in the few hundred thousand tons.
Perhaps homeowners in the government-owned housing shown (this example adjacent to the landfill) can take some shelter, but the man standing on a mountain of trash aiming the fire hose seems completely unprotected from the noxious fumes, including methane gas, rising from the fire. Fire or no, methane gas is rising into the atmosphere from this uncontrolled landfill.
If common sense still possesses me, I’d be embarrassed for the landfill operator which dispatched apparently unprotected firefighters to this mound of garbage.
Due to the age of the landfill, it’s unlikely that much, if any of it, has a liner underneath. Fire would be a major threat to such a liner if it existed.
Without fire, the eventual, natural decomposition of materials there have no doubt had deleterious effects on the water table beneath. Think too of underground streams and good aquifer threatened by leachate pools created by the water-dousing efforts at the locations on fire.
Several days after we left The Bahamas, another major fire broke out that weekend at the landfill, also marking the first time Renew Bahamas’ management has been criticized by a major political party official since it took over.
So long as multiple fires continue to erupt yearly at the Harold Road landfill, there doesn’t seem to be a chance in Sheol of the Bahamian government achieving its goal to reduce carbon emissions by 30% by 2030, as announced last December at the Paris Climate Change Conference.
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I found these 3-D artworks on display in the reception area of Renew Bahamas on-site office. They were created by Bahamian middle and prep school students. Whimsical is one word for each. Contrasting, for the two paired.
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BTW, recycling doesn’t happen at the 379-room Riu Palace where we stayed on Paradise Island. The front desk receptionist said she wished they did.