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DUMP FEES ON THE HORIZON

Following the strike by St. Croix’s trash haulers last week, the Department of Public Works and the Lieutenant Governor are planning to institute tipping fees at the territory’s dumps.
The government owes contracted trash haulers more than $1.5 million going back to 1995 and its two landfills, Anguilla and Bovoni, are plagued with major problems.
The Anguilla dump on St. Croix must either be moved or redesigned by Dec. 31, 2000, because of its proximity to the Henry E. Rohlsen Airport. The federal government is also pressuring the V.I. to bring both its dumps into Environmental Protection Agency compliance by instituting a comprehensive solid-waste management plan.
Keys to accomplishing those tasks will be charging companies and residents to use the dumps, as is done on the mainland, and establishing a waste-management authority.
Sondra Nelthropp, a St. Thomas native and a technical assistant to PWD Commissioner Harold Thompson on waste management issues, has returned to the territory to assist in starting the government’s own waste management authority, according to a statement from Lt. Gov. Gerard Luz James II earlier this week.
Nelthropp was last employed by the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority, where she ran the engineering department at a $3.2 million wastewater treatment plant.
James said the strike and many of the solid-waste problems in the territory should become things of the past as the government begins a program that will pay for itself.

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