Growth & Jobs | Holness: Waste-to-energy plant to replace Retirement, Riverton City landfills
Published:Tuesday | January 17, 2023 | 12:26 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer -
WESTERN BUREAU:
PRIME MINISTER Andrew Holness says both the fire-prone Retirement and Riverton City landfills in St James and St Andrew, respectively, will be closed and a waste-to-energy plant constructed in central Jamaica.
“We’re going to be developing what we call a total waste management system. It is an integrated system, [in] which we’ll see a long-term concession to construct a waste-to-energy plant in Jamaica. Effectively, we will create a market for waste, so we will be creating a circular economy in waste because the waste will become feedstock for electricity generation. So very soon waste will have value,” said Holness.
The prime minister was speaking at Edmund Bartlett’s East Central St James Education Fund’s 25th anniversary fundraising dinner held at at the Half Moon Conference Centre in St James on Saturday night.
“We will close the Retirement dump and the Riverton City dump and we will, through a public-private partnership, construct a sanitary landfill in the centre of the island. We have identified the lands already and the studies have been done, and we intend to go to market very soon to find a partner who will construct and operate, [it],” he announced.POTENTIAL INVESTORS
For approximately 50 years, the existing landfills have served as a source of economic survival for many poverty-stricken Jamaicans, but equally, they have caused chaos in the commercial hubs of Kingston and Montego Bay. The effects of having the dumps in close proximity to residential communities have reportedly left residents with enormous medical bills and lingering respiratory problems as a result of the smoke that emanates from the periodic fires, which have generally been said to be of unknown origin.
The National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) reports, however, that a fire which erupted at the Retirement disposal site on December 18 was the work of arsonists.
Holness said the process to put into operation the closure of the two largest landfills which are being operated by the NSWMA could be given the nod of approval before the new financial year, starting April 1. This as the Cabinet is to receive and peruse the business documents by the end of January.
“We will also give a long-term concession for the collection of waste and the building of transfer stations. And by the end of this month, Cabinet will get the business case for all these operations for us to approve, and once the business case is approved, then we go to the RFP - request for proposal - process,” stated Holness.
The prime minister said that the Government is aware of the level of energy among potential investors towards waste-to-energy projects, having carried out a “successful sounding” over the last five years.
“This is an area that is maturing, and there are many investors who have operations who want to come and do the entire thing,” he noted.
With the closure of these landfills and the establishment of a waste-to-energy plant, Holness informed that the NSWMA will change its mode of operation from that of collecting waste and managing landfills.
“The NSWMA will now become the enforcement arm of government, and so their operations will change,” he said. He advised that the fines and penalties under the NSWMA Act will be strengthened and increased to further deter persons from destroying the environment by way of inappropriately disposing of their garbage.