A re­vamp of the use of land­fills is among the plans for the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties for 2023.

In the So­cial Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme for 2023, it was not­ed that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny is set to em­bark on the de­vel­op­ment of a pi­lot project for the treat­ment of or­gan­ics.

In the doc­u­ment, which was re­leased on the Min­istry of Fi­nance web­site fol­low­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, it said, “SWM­COL will de­vel­op a pi­lot project for the treat­ment of or­gan­ic waste (es­ti­mat­ed to com­prise 27% of the to­tal waste gen­er­at­ed lo­cal­ly, based on the 2010 Waste Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and Cen­troid Study by Cana­di­an Con­sul­tants, CB­CL Lim­it­ed.)”

The doc­u­ment stat­ed: “SWM­COL is present­ly con­sid­er­ing the use of the Black Sol­dier Fly (BSF) to treat with food waste in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The project would seek to di­vert waste from the na­tion’s land­fills and en­sure the prop­er man­age­ment of or­gan­ics to avoid threats to pub­lic health and the en­vi­ron­ment. This pi­lot project fol­lows tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance re­ceived in fis­cal 2022 un­der the Cana­da-Cari­com Ex­pert De­ploy­ment Mech­a­nism (CCEDM).”

In his con­tri­bu­tion to the Bud­get de­bate on Fri­day, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les gave a bit more in­sight on plans to de­vel­op a new land­fill in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He said, “The Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go would have com­plet­ed its topo­graph­ic and hy­dro­graph­ic sur­veys, a cadas­tral sur­vey and its ge­ot­ech­ni­cal and ground­wa­ter stud­ies. Present­ly, the au­thor­i­ty is work­ing with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty on an ES­IA as well as on Cer­tifi­cate of Clear­ance, en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance.”

He said the new land­fill was cru­cial as the three land­fills cur­rent­ly in op­er­a­tion, were close to ca­pac­i­ty.

“I must say that SWM­COL will seek to en­gage a de­sign con­sul­tant to con­struct a new en­gi­neered land­fill in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause I can tell you the Gu­napo land­fill, the Beetham land­fill, and the land­fill in South, they are all burst­ing at their seams. They are all at their max­i­mum ca­pac­i­ty. And there­fore in Trinidad and To­ba­go at this point in time. It is a sense of ur­gency that we move in­to a more en­gi­neered land­fill that we get on board our bev­er­age con­tain­er leg­is­la­tion,” said the min­is­ter who al­so made a call for cit­i­zens to re­view its waste man­age­ment prac­tices.

“Waste man­age­ment is very crit­i­cal, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to the pro­tec­tion of our en­vi­ron­ment and the pro­tec­tion of our wa­ter cours­es and our un­der­ground aquifers,” he said.

Nei­ther the Min­is­ter nor the So­cial Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (SSIP) doc­u­ment list­ed a cost for the planned land­fill project.

The Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry was al­lo­cat­ed $2.823B in the 2023 fis­cal pack­age.

These sig­nals come over a year af­ter the NGC Group signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SWM­COL) on Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 13, 2021, con­cern­ing plans to ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties to cap­ture and com­mer­cialise land­fill gas for use such as the pro­vi­sion of car­bon-neg­a­tive, re­new­able com­pressed nat­ur­al gas.

As part of that agree­ment, NGC will seek to iden­ti­fy and quan­ti­fy methane emis­sions from ex­ist­ing land­fills and de­ter­mine ways to mon­e­tise this source of bio-fu­el and green en­er­gy. The cap­tured methane emis­sions can po­ten­tial­ly be used to fu­el SWM­COL’s fleet of ve­hi­cles and oth­er of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment fleets.

Gon­za­les ded­i­cat­ed a large chunk of his pre­sen­ta­tion to plans for the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty as he said the com­pa­ny would be look­ing at the de­vel­op­ment of new wells to in­crease wa­ter sup­ply reg­u­lar­i­ty.

In the SSIP doc­u­ment, the MPU is set to en­gage in the Com­mu­ni­ty Wa­ter Im­prove­ment Plan (CWIP).

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, “The Min­istry will un­der­take Phase 4 of the pro­gramme. Phase 4 en­tails the com­ple­tion of two (2) boost­er sta­tions in To­ba­go and in­stal­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15.08km of pipeline in North and South Trinidad and To­ba­go. The works will pro­vide ap­prox­i­mate­ly 17,950 per­sons with a more re­li­able sup­ply of wa­ter.”

WASA was al­so slat­ed to do re­fur­bish­ment work at a num­ber of its fa­cil­i­ties in the doc­u­ment.

These fa­cil­i­ties in­clud­ed: the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, Navet Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, Gua­napo Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, North Oropouche Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, Chatham Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, Hills­bor­ough Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, and the Hol­lis Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant.

The doc­u­ment stat­ed, “These works will im­prove the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of ser­vice, wa­ter qual­i­ty and sup­ply to over 400,000 per­sons from sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in­clud­ing: Ma­yaro, Co­coyea, Barack­pore Princes Town, Tabaquite and Na­pari­ma. Gua­napo, Ari­ma and en­vi­rons, Va­len­cia and Trinci­ty.”

In his con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get de­bate, Gon­za­les said the Pro­gramme had been a suc­cess so far but ad­mit­ted all of WASA’s wa­ter treat­ment plants were op­er­at­ing be­low ca­pac­i­ty.

He said, “We be­lieve as we un­der­take some crit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion to re­ha­bil­i­tate those plants we are con­fi­dent that com­mu­ni­ties all over Trinidad and To­ba­go will see an im­prove­ment in their wa­ter sup­ply in ear­ly 2023.”

The Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter added, “In this new fi­nan­cial year. We will un­der­take ro­bust well de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes in Siparia, in Pe­nal, and in Freeport to in­crease wa­ter pro­duc­tion, tar­get­ing ar­eas that are get­ting wa­tered 24/1 and be­low be­cause we be­lieve Madam Speak­er, we be­lieve that while every­one is en­ti­tled to a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply we have the re­sources and ca­pac­i­ty to bring every­one to 24/3.”

The Min­is­ter al­so touched on WASA’s spot­ty rep­u­ta­tion with re­gard to road re­pair, and ex­plained that go­ing for­ward WASA would use a ded­i­cat­ed road paver.

“We have rec­og­nized that there are in­sti­tu­tion­al flaws in WASA’s man­age­ment of road restora­tion,” said Gon­za­les, “WASA’s main man­date is to pro­vide the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go with wa­ter and waste­water ser­vices. And there­fore, with re­spect to road restora­tion, a de­ci­sion has been tak­en to al­low for ex­pe­ri­enced road pavers to con­duct road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and road restora­tion, there­by al­low­ing the util­i­ty com­pa­ny to fo­cus on its key man­date, which is to pro­vide the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go with a re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply.”

Ac­cord­ing to the SSIP doc­u­ment, the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties in­tends to sup­ply wa­ter tanks to mem­bers of the pub­lic.

The doc­u­ment stat­ed, “Un­der the Pro­gramme, the MPU will dis­trib­ute ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 (800 gal­lon tanks) and 70 (1000 gal­lon tanks) to house­holds and five (5) 1000 gal­lon tanks to five (5) com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties.”

An al­lo­ca­tion has been put aside for the MPU to pro­vide of Util­i­ty Bill as­sis­tance.

The re­port said, “Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 13, 000 low in­come cus­tomers of the WASA and Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) will re­ceive wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty sub­si­dies at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $3,750,000.”