With less than two years to go before an ominous federal deadline, Department of Public Works officials are working on a plan to close the Anguilla Landfill on St. Croix and construct a new solid waste management facility.
At a hearing of the Senate Government Operations, Planning and Environmental Protection Committee on St. Croix Thursday, Sonya Nelthropp, technical assistant to the Public Works commissioner on waste management, told senators that the department will soon enter into negotiations with a contractor to begin work on a solid waste facility. At $100 million-plus, the state-of-the-art facility will be the territory’s most costly public project ever.
"We had individuals responding from around the world," Nelthropp said about the bidding process.
Because of the threat scavenging birds and frequent dump fires pose to aircraft using the Henry E. Rohlsen Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration has ordered the Anguilla Landfill closed. If the closure isn’t completed by December 2002, the FAA has threatened to turn millions of dollars of V.I. Port Authority grants into loans.
But in order to close the old dump, a new waste facility must be constructed to dispose of the approximately 150,000 tons of garbage produced each year in the territory. Because of potential air pollution problems, a lack of available land and the lack of federally approved solid waste rules and regulations, Nelthropp said a burning and burying the trash aren’t options.
"The community is vehemently against incinerating as a process," she said, and because of "logistics and space, we cannot do landfills."
The one alternative remaining, Nelthropp said, is a waste-to-energy method called gasification. While both gasification and incineration use heat to destroy garbage, incineration burns organic material in solid waste by introducing air during the process, producing high-temperature gases that must be cooled and cleaned before being released through a smokestack. The byproduct of the process — ash, which consists of metals and silica — must be disposed of in a landfill.
Gasification operates at temperatures almost twice as high as incineration. Because of the high temperatures, all organic compounds are destroyed. The high temperatures are also above the melting point of metal and mineral products found in solid waste. The metal byproduct is processed into pellets that can be used in a smelter.
Garbage from St. Thomas and St. John would be compacted and barged to the facility on St. Croix. Initially, plans called for a facility on both St. Croix and St. Thomas.
Meanwhile, at the committee’s hearing on St. Thomas on Wednesday, Jim Casey, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Virgin Islands coordinator, painted a grim picture of that island’s wastewater system. He said six of Public Works’ wastewater treatment plants are "in very poor operation and management condition."
"The other four . . . are meeting only minimal or acceptable functioning standards," he said.
Casey said the Charlotte Amalie Wastewater Treatment Plant hasn’t been functional for "many months now."
Back on St. Croix, however, sewage problems are improving somewhat, said Dean Plaskett, commissioner of the Department of Planning and Natural Resources, the agency that has oversight of Public Works’ waste handling operations.
"The situation is much better than it was a year ago or two years ago," Plaskett said. "There is still problems, not everything has been solved. But we’re moving in the right direction."
Ironically, a glaring example of the problems faced by Public Works was a sewer main that broke Thursday not far from the Senate chambers in Frederiksted. Acting Public Works Commissioner Wayne Callwood said a force main in a field adjacent to St. Patrick School broke.
A similar break occurred in the same area almost exactly a year ago, causing the school to close for a week and more than 100,000 gallons a day of sewage to be discharged into the sea. Because of the current break, Callwood advised the public from swimming in the waters near the Ann E. Abramson Pier, where visiting cruise ships call when visiting St. Croix.
In other committee action on Wednesday, senators unanimously passed a bill allowing DPNR enforcement officers to carry weapons and arrest those who violate conservation laws. Under the bill, DPNR officers could issue "conservation tickets" and levy fines against violators.
Revenues from the tickets would go into the Fish and Game Fund. Enforcement officers must be graduates of the V.I. Police Academy, according Plaskett. The bill now goes before the Rules Committee.
