Urgent action needed on landfill, says Alleyne

The Mangrove Pond Landfill in St Thomas is running out of space for garbage.

Sanitation Service Authority (SSA) chairman Senator Ramon Alleyne reported this yesterday and called for improvements in the country’s waste management and garbage disposal, otherwise, “we will have a continuing problem in that area”.

He was speaking in the Upper Chamber on the third day of debate on the Appropriation Bill, 2026.

Alleyne highlighted SSA improvements in operations and garbage collection, but said the management of Mangrove Landfill remained “one of the nagging issues”.

“We have improved markedly over past practices and occurrences. We have not seen a fire emanating from that landfill in recent times because of the implementation of certain . . . protocols,” he said.

“The reality is that the [landfill] space is running out, the reality is that if we do not improve our management [and] improve the manner in which we deal with our refuse disposal, we will have a continuing problem in that area.”

Minister of Health and Wellness Senator Lisa Cummins said on Monday that there would be a green energy plant at Mangrove.

Alleyne said this initiative and other efforts “would mean that the management of our waste disposal will improve”.

He added, however, that “ensuring that there’s a limitation of odour and the like is not an easy job”.

“Legislation has to be introduced that deals with the issues of offal, dead carcasses and the like, which are delivered to the Mangrove Landfill, which should not be delivered to the Mangrove Landfill,” the chairman said.

“So when you’re driving along the . . . highway and you get hit with a smell, most persons [say], that’s the dump’, [but] quite often it’s not the dump. There are other facilities up in the Mangrove area that make a major contribution to odour and how it travels in that corridor.

“So there is more work to be done, but I cannot say that over the past six to eight years, in terms of the investment, in terms of the provisions that have been set forth in this B in terms of the move back to the Ministry of Health, that this Government . . . [is not] doing what is necessary.”

Alleyne, who chaired the SSA board under a previous Barbados Labour Party administration, said he returned to the post a decade later in 2018 to find the entity “decimated to its core”. (GBM)

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