De­siree See­baran

A black, poi­so­nous liq­uid run-off from the Gua­napo Land­fill has pol­lut­ed the sur­round­ing rivers and sub-sur­face wa­ter for 30 years, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing wa­ter used for drink­ing and crop ir­ri­ga­tion in east­ern and cen­tral Trinidad. This came to light af­ter a meet­ing of the Par­lia­ment Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on De­cem­ber 9 last year, where mem­bers of the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Co Ltd's (SWM­COL) ex­ec­u­tive were ques­tioned about the dump. Of the three land­fills in Trinidad, Gua­napo isn't usu­al­ly the one at the cen­tre of con­tro­ver­sy. How­ev­er, not many peo­ple know that a 1980 gov­ern­ment-com­mis­sioned Sol­id Waste Mas­ter Plan rec­om­mend­ed that the Gua­napo Land­fill be closed. To­day, it re­mains open for busi­ness and the dump has con­tin­ued to taint the two rivers that run on ei­ther side, as well as un­ex­plored ground wa­ter re­serves used to feed the coun­try.

The Gua­napo Land­fill sits in a small val­ley near the foot of the North­ern Range, be­tween the Gua­napo Riv­er and the Gua­napo Trib­u­tary, both of which feed in­to the Ca­roni. Every­day, trucks car­ry­ing all kinds of sol­id waste-from spoiled food­stuff to bro­ken ap­pli­ances to car bat­ter­ies, branch­es and cut grass-trun­dle past se­cu­ri­ty through the land­fill gates to add to the ever-grow­ing moun­tain of refuse it con­tains. For years au­thor­i­ties have been aware that leachate - a black "juice" that is pro­duced dur­ing the de­com­po­si­tion of sol­id waste-has been seep­ing out of the dump and in­to sur­face and un­der­ground wa­ter sup­plies. En­vi­ron­men­tal­ists and oth­er con­cerned cit­i­zens are con­vinced that this pol­lu­tion is hurt­ing the eco­log­i­cal bal­ance in Gua­napo and af­fect­ing the agri­cul­tur­al crops you eat and the wa­ter you drink.

Rivers pol­lut­ed

Res­i­dents around the dump are in­creas­ing­ly aware of how con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed their rivers are be­com­ing. They can no longer use the riv­er wa­ter for do­mes­tic pur­pos­es. When it comes in­to con­tact with hu­man skin, it caus­es rash­es and itch­ing, they say. They don't want to think about what might hap­pen if the wa­ter is in­gest­ed. "I know when this riv­er was a riv­er," said Gary Dou­glas, a res­i­dent of Gua­napo for more than 30 years. "We used to drink the wa­ter. And now you can't do that any­more be­cause of the dump. I used to plant gar­den. Now I have to [steal] the Gov­ern­ment wa­ter to plant."

But the "gov­ern­ment wa­ter" may not be safe ei­ther. The dump is up­hill and min­utes away from the Gua­napo Wa­ter Treat­ment plant, which is fed by the same rivers and ground­wa­ter that are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by the dump's leachate, said the JSC vice-chair Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit. "What I re­call from my own re­search with the wa­ter treat­ment plant is that the source of the wa­ter is be­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed in sig­nif­i­cant amounts, and all of that is feed­ing as far as cen­tral [Trinidad], and in fact one of the re­ports said as far as Ma­yaro," she added dur­ing the JSC ses­sion. At the plant, the pol­lut­ed wa­ter is treat­ed, but to what ex­tent? When asked if re­porters could vis­it the plant to get a sense of how the wa­ter is pu­ri­fied or speak to the au­thor­i­ties' wa­ter ex­perts, Wa­ter and Sewage Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Ellen Lewis said ap­proval had been grant­ed, but Guardian Me­dia would not be al­lowed in­to the plant or grant­ed in­ter­views un­til "some busi­ness was fi­nalised."

A na­tion­al health haz­ard

Mean­while, no one seems sure about the ex­tent to which pol­lut­ed wa­ter is caus­ing a na­tion­al health haz­ard. Sources tell us that a study was done be­tween 2006 and 2008 that looked at the im­pact of the Beetham and Gua­napo land­fills on sur­face and sub-sur­face wa­ter. This study al­leged­ly con­firms that con­t­a­m­i­nants from the dump are pol­lut­ing the ground and sur­face wa­ter and gives re­sults of tests done. The Trinidad Guardian has not yet been able to ob­tain a copy of this study. Roger Be­lix, a con­cerned cit­i­zen, be­gan to no­tice sev­er­al years ago that peo­ple were con­tract­ing ill­ness­es in Ari­ma. The ill­ness­es de­vel­oped in strange pat­terns with no ex­pla­na­tion. "We found it strange that both hus­band and wife suf­fer­ing from can­cer, peo­ple get­ting kid­ney prob­lems," he said. Res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases were al­so on the rise.

In 2009, the Jonathan Be­lix Foun­da­tion (which Be­lix heads) got the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (CARIRI) to test tap wa­ter at strate­gic points in Ari­ma, in­clud­ing the Ari­ma Boys RC School and at a com­pa­ny in the O'Meara In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. At the foun­da­tion's re­quest, CARIRI test­ed for poi­so­nous met­als in the wa­ter, not for bac­te­ria as WASA does, Be­lix said. The re­sults were dis­turb­ing; the lev­el of mer­cury found in all the tap wa­ter was 0.003 mil­ligrammes per litre (mg/L). The US En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) rec­om­mends that not more than 0.002 mg/L is al­low­able to pro­tect pub­lic health. That means that the tap wa­ter test­ed con­tains 50 per cent more mer­cury than the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly al­lowed amount.