Tivoli Gully gets interceptor to trap waste entering Kgn Harbour
Published:Saturday | December 17, 2022 | 1:21 AMJudana Murphy/Gleaner Writer
An interceptor barrier has been installed at the mouth of Tivoli Gully to trap and prevent garbage from flowing into the Kingston Harbour.
Director of operations at Clean Harbours Jamaica, Dieno Campbell, explained that when the garbage is contained, an interceptor tender – a specialised vessel with a conveyor drive motor at the front – travels on the outskirts of the barrier to collect the waste.
“The advantage of this location is that we can clear the barrier from sea and from land, working with the elements – wind action and current action. We anticipate that a lot of the debris will come on land, so whatever we can get from sea side, we will take, and what we can get from land side, we will bag and transport it by sea to the offloading site,” Campbell detailed.
The garbage will be sorted at the offloading site and recyclables will be sent to Recycling Partners of Jamaica and the remainder to the Riverton landfill.
Campbell said that the barrier will be cleaned five days per week. Additional servicing will be done as needed, depending on the amount of rainfall.
The Tivoli Gully is the fourth of the 11 most polluted gullies to receive waste-trapping technology through the project, which is being carried out through a partnership between The Ocean Cleanup, Clean Harbours Jamaica and the GraceKennedy Foundation, with support received from the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation and the constituency of Kingston Western.
Clean Harbours Jamaica Managing Director Michael McCarthy said that plastic is the major contributor to pollution in the area.
McCarthy shared that the Mona Geoinformatics Institute assists with surveillance and that cameras have been erected at each gully to help monitor the inflow of garbage.
Clean Harbours Jamaica Operations Manager Alecia Beaufort told The Gleaner that the intervention at the Tivoli Gully required a lot of coordination, and through the mayor’s office, community members who own trucks and equipment were engaged.
“We ended up taking up about 23 truckloads of debris [in] various size trucks, but many people pitched in. Without them, we couldn’t have moved the debris in two days,” she said, expressing gratitude to the participating residents.
Beaufort said that the majority of people employed for these projects reside in the communities and that staff will be sought for the Tivoli Gully initiative in January.
“Most of the persons who work at our offloading sites are from communities that the barriers are in. We will absolutely be keeping the community involved and Grace has environmental wardens who actually go into the communities and discuss with residents the importance of keeping debris out of the gullies,” the operations manager explained.
Meanwhile, Local Government and Community Development Minister Desmond McKenzie said he is pleased that communities have bought into the initiative.
“Grace, we want to thank you and the team. We really appreciate the work that has been undertaken so far. There are major plans for Kingston Harbour, where billions of dollars are going to be spent over the next couple of years,” he added, noting that it is the aim to position the Kingston waterfront as a “showpiece” as part of the revitalisation of downtown Kingston.
Junior project engineer at The Ocean Cleanup, Gregoire Simon, said that by the end of the second quarter next year, two more gullies will be equipped with barriers – Mountain View Gully and Shoemaker Gully.
By December next year, the team hopes to begin working on the Hunts Bay Gully.