FORMER executive director of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), Christopher Powell, says the current agency head Jennifer Edwards was set up to fail.

She has been the focus of much criticism and chastisement in the public domain since the latest in an almost yearly assault of fires at the Riverton dump erupted, on March 11.

In her defence, Edwards said the agency has been severely hobbled over the years by a critical lack of the resources required to upgrade and transform the facility to meet developed country standards.

Apparently bowing to public pressure, the NSWMA board announced last week that it would not renew Edwards’ contract, which was schedule to expire yesterday.

But speaking with the Jamaica Observer by telephone Tuesday evening, Powell, who held the position from late-2006 to late-2007, said Edwards “was given a basket to carry water”.

“I’m not privy to all [that’s going on] but on the face of it she’s been given a basket to carry water, and I’m speaking from experience. From my time and before Alston Stewart’s time, every executive director will tell you we have countless [discussions on ways] to put in trucks, for infrastucture development of the landfill, not only at Riverton but Retirement, Haddon, Martin’s Hill, everywhere, and it takes money. I don’t know the internal runnings of what’s going on now, but she doesn’t have enough resources — I never did, either — to run the place,” Powell said.

He said the cost to build a “modern, sanitary landfill” was between US$35 million and US$40 million and added that even with external support, it was a price Government could not afford.

“There were designs done for constructing a modern sanitary landfill between 2002 and 2004 under an IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) project and the drawings were there. It’s just that the money that the IDB had allocated was not enough to construct the landfill,” Powell told the Observer. “Some work was done. They built a weigh station, an office and gave some equipment, but I couldn’t tell you what transpired out there,” he added.

The project to which he referred was signed off on in 1999, and had a total cost of US$16.5 million, US$11.5 million of which would have been a loan from the IDB to the Government of Jamaica. The improvement works were to be carried out over four years, but it was extended for three years, until 2007. Up to that time, only US$3.82 million of the US$11.5 million had been disbursed.

In addition to what he described as limited resources for construction, Powell said the operation costs would also prove astronomical given that the agency’s own trucks would have to pay to enter and use the site once it is established as a modern landfill.

“Modern landfills make their money from tipping fees, not waste-to-energy,” he said.

“Investors will come and say, ‘We will build and operate a transfer waste-to-energy station’ and that they will invest ‘X’ and sell energy to the grid. That’s all well and good, but the critical thing about it is waste-to-energy plants make money off tipping fees, not the garbage because the trucks come and they have to pay to come in and dump the garbage… So privatising is something we could look, but I think we have to do more studies and a lot of due diligence for anybody who comes and makes proposals to build waste-to-energy plants,” Powell continued.

Tipping fees, he said, could cost in the region of US$20 per trip.

Powell was seconded from the Local Government Reform Unit and served as acting executive director of the NSWMA from November 2006 to October 2007. When the Jamaica Labour Party came to power in 2007 he was transferred back to the reform unit and later to the Manchester Parish Council where he filled the role of secretary/manager with Brenda Ramsay as mayor. He resigned from the public service at the end of December 2013, days before his controversial transfer to the St Mary Parish Council was to take effect.

He now works as an economic development specialist with the Caribbean Local Economic Development Programme (CARILED).