ELIM, St Elizabeth – Following allegations that the Sydney Pagon Agricultural School here is dumping its solid waste in an area not authorised by the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), the state-run agency has put the school’s activities under the microscope.

Reports from residents in the small community are that the agricultural institution gets rid of its solid waste – including stationery, household products and scraps of metal – by trucking it to an area located on lands adjacent to the school’s tutorial farms and only about 30 metres away from the Grass River.

But according to the solid waste agency, not only is the agricultural school’s alleged behaviour illegal, it is also unhealthy, since the disposal site is located so close to a natural water source.

“The approved landfill in St Elizabeth is at Friendship, near Myersville,” said Fabian Morris, commercial monitor at Southern Parks and Markets (SPM), a division of the NSWMA which has jurisdiction for Manchester and St Elizabeth. “Anywhere outside of that is considered illegal.”

David Campbell, who has to drive past the illegal dump to get to his cane farm on the other side of the river, told the Sunday Observer that the school has been disposing of its waste in that spot for many years and that other persons have since followed suit and are also depositing their waste near to the water’s edge.

“They dump any and everything there. Even when they butcher the chickens they throw the waste there,” he said.

Another farmer from the area, Duet Gayle, complained that in recent weeks he has lost about 100 lbs of pumpkin and he blamed it on pollution from the dump or from dunder, the oxygen-depleting by-product of rum distillation.

“It’s either some germs brought up by the dump or the dunder that caused it,” he said, pointing to the rotten pumpkins, that seemed scorched on one side, in his 1/4 acre field. “Anytime the river overflows and the dunder water touches your crop, it kills them,” he added.

Gayle said that the waters of the ‘blue hole’ in the middle of his field were once “crystal clear” and that he used to drink from it. Now, he said, because the water is polluted, he doesn’t even want to use it for irrigation.

From her office in Elim, vice-principal of the school Marlene Gayle, initially told the Sunday Observer that she knew nothing about the illegal dump. After a while, however, she admitted to knowing of the dump’s existence but said she wasn’t familiar with its “exact location”.

“I came here and see them doing it,” she said, explaining that waste from the school was collected each Monday and Wednesday by a contracted tractor-trailer which then disposed of the matter “at some dump, but I don’t know exactly where”.

She said that at one time, when the tractor was out of service, the school asked the national solid waste disposal body to collect the school’s refuse, but according to her, they didn’t show up.

“I remember we packed up the garbage in bags and had them out at the front but they (NSWMA) didn’t come and dogs tore up the bags and messed up the whole place,” she said.

NSWMA’s regional operations manager Glenroy Salter said he had no record of any communication between the school and any officer from the agency regarding waste removal. Salter confirmed, however, that the agency has launched an investigation into allegations of the illegal dump at the school.

“It has been established that dumping is taking place so the investigation is to ascertain who is doing the dumping and to decide what steps will be taken regarding getting rid of the dump – it’s an ongoing investigation,” Salter said.

While he could not say when the investigation would be concluded, Salter said that the school is committing an offence by disposing its waste in an area not authorised by the NSWMA.

According to section 45 of the Solid Waste Management Act of 2001, no person should deposit solid waste in any area or in any manner not approved by the Authority. Neither should someone operate a waste disposal facility or provide waste disposal services without a valid license or operations certificate from the NSWMA. The fine for such actions goes up to $1 million. In default of the fine, a prison term not exceeding nine months can be applied. The Act states that a combination of both punishments is also possible.