City garbage dump overflowing unto highway

Garbage: it’s a problem that for years has been ignored, swept under the rug, buried in the sand, hidden away, and just plain pushed around. But trust me, like your own overflowing pail in the kitchen, at some point it’s got to be dealt with. And for Belize City, it appears that the day of reckoning is now.

Jacqueline Godwin
There is no question. The Belize City Garbage Dump Site at mile three on the western highway is out of control. This mountain of trash you see behind me is estimated to be ten to fifteen feet high.

Garbage now fills the entire piece of property to the point where the site’s security booth will soon be buried under its own heap of trash. The road that leads to the back of the site disappeared long ago and there is no longer access into the compound. The garbage has overrun the dump’s entrance, making it not only one big eye sore but a danger to motorists travelling the western highway.

It did not take long before a traffic jam was created as trucks arriving at the site could not safely manoeuvre in the limited space left to dump the trash.

Anthony “Boots” Martinez, Area Representative
“When you cannot push no more, when you reach you limit, then you’re just squeezing and then even the equipment won’t be able to shub the amount of garbage in time, meanwhile people are bringing more garbage. That is very terrible. It’s turning a traffic hazard and it’s dangerous…this is a highway.”

Citizen #1
“Something really needs to be done about this, really urgently, because look pan di garbage, look weh di garbage deh – way pan di street side di stink up di areas and cause lot a accident too; and so something really needs to be done.”

Citizen #2
“Noh everyday I use it, sometimes I come dump thing here… noh all di time.”

Jacqueline Godwin
“But this must be very frustrating?”

Citizen #2
“Bad, bad, very bad, and you have to pay ten dollars.”

Jacqueline Godwin
“You di look pan dis and weh di go through your mind?”

Citizen #3
“We need wah new garbage site; need wah new garbage site.”

Jacqueline Godwin
“You never know di garbage mi this high?”

Citizen #3
“Well I noh usually pass through this side, so since I come now, I di notice it now. We need a new garbage dump now.”

Jacqueline Godwin
“And you guys, I notice, are waiting on the side. Why were you told to wait?”

Citizen #3
“Well, they never tell me fi wait but I just di check out everything because I know da truck wah definitely can’t fit there. So I might have to ker home back di garbage.”

Area residents have also expressed their concern about the unsightly mess in their neighbourhood.

Anthony “Boots” Martinez
“And a part from that, it cannot hold no more, the garbage cannot go any farther, it cannot go no more, so I hope that the government will act.”

Area Representative Anthony Boots Martinez says it’s not only the immediate area that’s being affected but a larger part of his constituency.

Anthony “Boots” Martinez
“To me it’s a health hazard because beside what you see here, you have all the silt and the toxic acid that penetrate through the ground so it reach all the way to Jane Usher Boulevard, so that in itself, this is like a cancer eating you inside.”

Deputy mayor and councillor responsible for public health Wayne Usher says since the new city council took office last march the dump site has been a growing problem. According to Usher they were not only given a notice to vacate by the land owner but central government has yet to put into effect a Waste Solid Management Project that was specifically designed to address the problem but has been sitting on a shelf since 1997.

Wayne Usher, Deputy Mayor, Belize City Council
“We understand from Mister Luke Espat and his Carnival Group that that area belongs to them so we were given verbal notice by Mister Espat from last year, around mid-year, that we would have to vacate that spot come this year, and he was indicating that we were to start moving sometime in June/July of this year since after that period he will have to start moving that area to be an exit for the Carnival Group to the Western Highway.”

“The understanding we got from other officials in government is that listen, that might be what Mister Espat says but we cannot just move you out just like that. This came from high government officials, where else would you go, we have to have somewhere else for you to go before you move sow e are in a spot, in a position where we cannot just come out unless we have somewhere else to go.”

In the meantime, the garbage continues to build and space is fast running out at mile three. The proposed management plan includes two new sites and would be funded by monies collected from the environmental tax government instituted in 2001.

Wayne Usher
“There is going to be transfer station at mile seven to accept garbage coming in from the Belize District and the cayes to mile seven where the garbage will be sorted for on road transmission to the mile twenty four/twenty five site where it will be incinerated an disposed of properly. That is the plan for the garbage situation; when that comes on stream is anybody’s guess.”

Anthony “Boots” Martinez
“I do not know what they are waiting for, they have been collecting two percent in environmental tax for a long time. I mean, I think if you want to put a garbage dump that almost equivalent to ten/fifteen million, government has been collecting two percent in environmental tax to alleviate those same situation. I do not know if they have a pool of funds in regards to it but I think it is high time, this is a residential area now and it is starting to affect the residents total in this area.”

Wayne Usher
“So we will write a form a letter, I will draft that letter, today, and ask the government, through the waste authority, where are we in terms of that dump site and when are the plans coming on stream for the waste transfer station and the final disposal site.”

“We do not want to expend a lot of monies on that site knowing we have to vacate.”

Neither Martinez nor Usher would comment on what they believe may be causing the delay, but to make matters worse, today, the only two bulldozers used to create more space on the compound by pushing back the garbage broke down.

Wayne Usher
“We have already, as we speak, contracted Cisco Construction Company. They are mobilizing, at this very moment, to go out there and push it back for us; at this very moment Cisco is going to do that and they are going to do that for as long as it takes.”

In the meantime, residents living in the area of the proposed transfer station have already expressed their concerns, but Usher says, from what he has seen, there should be no need to worry.

Wayne Usher
“This entire project was done with the best interest of all concerned. Certainly, there might be some inconveniences but I do not think the impact will be as great as to affect their livelihood and their lives to the extent that it will be detrimental to them, I do not think so. I think the move is one for the betterment of everyone, all the residents.”

“I would give the project a chance to see it work because I do believe it was done in the proper fashion this way.”

Meanwhile, the laws of physics may not allow the situation to remain contained much longer.

How this garbage situation has gotten so out of hand is a question that is difficult to answer. What we do know is that as far back as 1997 government commissioned a detailed study which recommended a comprehensive national plan financed by a one percent tax on imports. By the year 2000, G.O.B. implemented half the plan–that is the tax part–but never did a thing about the garbage. Almost seven years later the refuse continues to pile up and all those millions in environmental tax–now at two percent–have disappeared into the black hole known as the consolidated fund.