Tenders to be opened soon for expansion of city landfill
Stabroek News
May 7, 2003
Residents living near the Mandela Avenue landfill may get some relief soon with the opening of tenders on May 13 for the Georgetown Disposal Improvement Project which aims to make interim im-provements to the site.
The Project Implemen-tation Unit (PIU) of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) had recently advertised for tenders in the newspapers. Developers will be given a four-week period from the awarding of the contract in which to move their equipment to the site and begin work.
The advertisement stated that the Government of Guyana (GOG) had received financing from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for the environmental improvement of the George-town interim disposal site.
The project is estimated to cost between US$735,000 and US$1.6M and intends to expand the present landfill at Mandela Avenue by five acres to the west of the site. On completion of this, the area presently used for dumping garbage would no longer be used.
The principal objective of the work, according to the PIU, is to close the existing open face of the landfill in an environmentally sound manner and put facilities in place to ensure effective environmental management of the landfill in the future. Such facilities include a ground water monitoring well and a methane gas monitoring well. The presence of methane gas has been cited as the cause of the recent conflagration at the Mandela Avenue landfill. To better access the landfill area, a new access road is to be constructed from the site to Cemetery Road. This road is to pass through the landfill all the way to Mandela Avenue.
There will also be a perimeter fence in addition to security guards posted on a 24-hour basis.
Lennox Caesar, Assistant Town Clerk and Administra-tive Officer of the Project told Stabroek News yesterday that the expanded landfill would have a lifespan of 18 months. When this period is up, a new landfill, which is to be located at Eccles, would hopefully be put into commission.
Caesar said that contrary to the present method of disposal, there would be a system introduced to properly sort the different classes of waste, which would minimise the development of harmful gases. These gases develop in voids created by bad storage of waste. (Johann Earle)
