BARBADOS: Citizens Take Government to Court over Landfill

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Terry Ally

BRIDGETOWN, Jun 13 1996 (IPS) - When the Barbadian government announced plans to build a garbage dump in an area that was previously designated as a national park it probably did not bargain for the reaction that decision would have evoked.

But in a rare case of its kind, a citizens’ group in this tiny eastern Caribbean island, population 252,000, is taking the government to court over this move.

The government’s plan is to construct a waste disposal facility at Greenland in the eastern parish of St. Andrew on a site from which shale was mined for the production of cement by the island’s lone cement plant.

Now a natural quarry, shale is no longer mined there.

Greenland is located in an area known as the Scotland District, which totals one-seventh of Barbados’ 430 sq. km land mass. It stretches from the north eastern section of the island, along the eastern corridor and ends at the east-south-eastern section.

Its geology is vastly different from the rest of the island, comprising oceanic clay. Generally, the area, which is missing the coral stone cap found in the rest of the island, is prone to landslides during the rainy season. But it is a very scenic area.

Government selected Greenland, in the Scotland District, before an environmental impact assessment (EIA) was commissioned. Minister of Health and Environment, Liz Thompson confirmed the decision afterwards saying that the EIA showed that Greenland was the most suitable location.

The current landfill at Mangrove in St. Thomas was set up to accommodate only 100 tonnes of garbage per day. It now receives 500 tonnes. The demand for waste disposal has outstripped the facilities.

The new landfill is expected to have a 22-year lifespan.

But the outcry over the location of the new landfill has been loud. The citizens which came together primarily for the purpose of fighting the government decision has formed themselves into a registered non-governmental organisation called the Scotland District Association (SDA).

They have been objecting on grounds that a landfill is incompatible with the goals and objectives of a national park.

They contend that should the island experience heavy rainfall — more than 10 inches in a 24-hour period — the area could be washed into the nearby sea and taken by ocean currents around the northern coast and deposited on west coast beaches near the main tourist resorts.

So far, Chairman of the SDA, farmer Richard Goddard, has been writing letters of protest to the government and the Inter- American Development Bank, which is considering a loan for the construction of the landfill.

Goddard, whose farm is located uphill from Greenland, also had representation on the EIA’s advisory committee. He disagrees with Thompson over the interpretation of the results of the EIA.

In his application to the High Court, Goddard contends that the Town and Country Planning Act and the Physical Development Plan — which governs planning permission — prohibits construction of a sanitary landfill in the Scotland District.

He is arguing that in order for government to construct the landfill there, it must first go through a well-defined legal process to change the Physical Development Plan.

Although there is no evidence that construction has started, Goddard said he believes it will start soon.

To support his position he has produced newspaper clippings, dated May 1996, quoting Thompson as saying that contracts have been awarded to two Canadian companies for construction and a Norwegian company for supervision of the project and that construction would start within eight weeks.

“What we are going to do with Greenland is not inconsistent with the idea of a national park,” Thompson said months ago.

Among the wad of documents attached to the Court papers, Goddard also produced correspondence from the prime minister’s office stating that government intended to abide by all legal requirements.

Against this background Goddard has asked for the intervention of the High Court in the matter, charging that government was forging ahead in “total disregard” of the law.

This is the second such case relating to solid waste disposal in Barbados to be taken before the Courts. The first was in 1994 when the residents living near the present landfill obtained a High Court injunction preventing the Sanitation Services Authority from dumping garbage on a section of the Mangrove Pond landfill, which became known as “Mount Stinkeroo”.

Improper management of the existing landfill, apparently stemming from a lack of funds when Barbados went through its financial crisis in the early 1990’s, gave rise to a mountain of garbage, dubbed Mount Stinkeroo because of the stench that emanated from it.

There was no money, the previous government said, to excavate another cell or buy cover material for the landfill.

The nearby residents protested for years, complaining of numerous health problems as a result. Their protests eventually led to a High Court injunction, obtained by their parliamentary representative David Simmons, who is now the Attorney General in the new Barbados Labour Party (BLP) government which took over the reigns of power from the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in September 1994.

In the three months of election campaigning, Mount Stinkeroo became a hot political issue, with the then opposition BLP promising to move the landfill if it formed the next government.