Missing the point on garbage

I was delighted to be able to attend the recent inauguration of Governor Ben Fitial and to also enjoy the ball later the same evening. As the first trip to this area of the world I was excited to visit your island and I was not disappointed by the welcome and friendliness of everybody that I met from the Governor to everyday shop keepers was tangible. You truly do have a unique little piece of paradise in a world short on peace and tranquility and long may it last! I was also very pleased to be invited to speak to Harry Blalock on his talk show on KZMI-fm and I am only sorry that Ruth Tighe evidently missed the show because if she had heard it, then perhaps her comments in her column on Sunday Jan. 15 would have been slightly more informed.

She has totally missed the point of our attempts to site our machines on the island of Saipan: There are two specific areas where the disposal of garbage is an issue; one is the closed dumpsite at Puerto Rico which she blithely says can be turned into a public park. Does she have any idea just what poisons are lurking under the surface of this dump and which are currently leaching (literally bleeding) into the water table and into the adjacent lagoon? It is not good enough to just cap the mountain of waste and plant it with pretty flowers and trees and hope that all the poison will mysteriously disappear because it won’t.

Our suggestion is that we take the dump apart, piece by piece, shred the waste, together with the soil which has been used to cover the layers, treat it and render it safe, inert and non toxic and then return it to the land whereby indeed it can be made into a public park safe in the knowledge that children and domestic pets will not be poisoned should they inadvertently swallow some of the ground water (which incidentally happened in a park alongside a brand new sanitary landfill in Spain a couple of years ago, when the dog of a friend of mine lapped at a stream and was dead the same night. The autopsy showed clear evidence of toxic substances which had leached from the nearby garbage. Luckily it wasn’t their child who was thirsty that day.)

In my radio interview I described the sanitary landfill at Marpi as being world-class showcase and I meant it; there is almost no odor, a distinct lack of flies and scavengers and the whole place radiates the pride that the manager should rightly feel. However any landfill is just that—land filled up with garbage, in this case properly lined with clay and thick plastic membranes; well compacted and designed for maximum use, but however well it is run the land will fill up and then a new hole or cell must be dug. The first cell is already half full and Marpi is already talking about more cells at an estimated cost to the island of $10 million. That will suffice for the next 20 years and then what?

Our suggestion is to work alongside the landfill, shredding the waste; making saleable products from the non biodegradable material which could either be used on the island or sold on the international market there is a huge shortfall of concrete roof tiles for example; kerbstones, paving stones, parking bumpers, drainage and sewerage channels all these are needed all over the island on an ongoing basis. As for the bio degradable material that would be treated and put back into the land to settle down without the need of more top soil covering and at a far smaller volume than currently being taken up. In other words, instead of 20 years, Marpi could last for 50 or 100, or quite likely forever. We haven’t even touched on the unpleasant subject of biomedical and hospital waste, which is currently incinerated, poisoning the air that we breathe. Our machines tackle that problem, too. Wouldn’t it be nice to think that Marpi would be the last piece of your little paradise wasted on waste?

Come on Ruth, listen to Harry’s radio program or come and see for yourself, our machines currently working efficiently in Manila before you condemn us and your own island.

Sandie Lenton
Forrest Managing Director
Philippines