Penny wise, pound foolish!

It's now costing more than necessary to control Riverton landfill fire

BY INGRID BROWN Observer senior reporter browni@jamaicaobserver.com

Thursday, February 16, 2012

IT'S a case of penny wise, pound foolish, or how a stitch in time could have saved nine, as the Government's failure to spend about $32 million to cover the Riverton City Landfill last year is now costing the country millions more.

Not only is controlling the fire — which caused smoke to blanket sections of the Corporate Area and St Catherine since last week — more expensive than it should have been, but it is also affecting the health of hundreds of residents and disrupting many schools and businesses.

A bill of close to $25 million has been racked up already by operators of heavy duty equipment and truckers who transported marl to cover the landfill to prevent the reignition of the fire, which is said to have started from natural combustion.

However, yesterday Information Minister Senator Sandrea Falconer said the landfill had not been covered in a year.

"An initial site visit indicated that the landfill had not been covered in a year, and this created a major challenge to the containment of the flare-ups," Falconer told journalists at the weekly Jamaica House Press Briefing in Kingston.

Journalists were told that it costs approximately $34 million for the initial one-off coverage of the entire landfill, and between $28 million and $32 million for its annual maintenance.

Director of operations at the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), Colonel Allan Douglas said financial challenges prevented the landfill being covered last year.

"Because of budgetary constraints we have not been able to have the covering necessary over the past year, but every effort is going to be made now to ensure that we are provided with the funds to provide cover material," Douglas told the press briefing.

He said the NSWMA had provided material for covering the landfill whenever the opportunity presented itself, but admitted that it was not to the desirable extent.

"As we move forward, I think we understand that funds will have to be provided and resources to prevent anything of this nature happening again," he said.

Meanwhile, director general of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management Ronald Jackson declined to say how much more money would be added to the projected $25-million bill committed for work already done for the first three of a projected eight-day exercise.

"We are scaling back, and several pieces of the unnecessary equipment were removed from the site and so we have to allow the back office accounting to work... so I don't want to give you a figure off the top of my head," he said, explaining, however, that everything was being done to keep within the $60 million, which was initially budgeted for the worst case scenario.

Having met the three-day deadline to extinguish the fire, Jackson said the team was working to keep the cooling and covering phase within the estimated five days which ends tomorrow.

Jackson added that some communities would continue to be affected for a while longer although significant progress had been made in controlling the smoke.

"We continue to monitor it and the conditions on site are significantly improved and continue to get better," he said, noting that a scaled back firefighting team is on location at the landfill for any eventualities.

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Penny wise, pound foolish!