We were on the second-floor balcony of Cox Lumber, Linton’s store on Eastern Avenue, when Linton spotted below an old friend (who must have been in his late 80s), leisurely pawing through merchandise in one bin or another.
Linton, obviously anxious to reacquaint, approached his friend with a smile on his face and a question on his lips: “Are you just lookin’ or buyin’?”
No matter how many requests for proposals it sends out, nor how many memoranda of understanding it signs with potential vendors, the Cayman Islands government cannot be considered a serious customer for a solid waste management solution until it can demonstrate it has sufficient means to pay for what it wants to buy.
Following last May’s election, Environmental Health Minister Osbourne Bodden declared his district of Bodden Town to be sacrosanct; off-limits as far as any new landfill is concerned.
That crushed prospects of concluding the previous government’s deal with the Dart Group, which had proposed spending $32.5 million to close and remediate the current George Town landfill, and then investing $26.5 million to create a new facility near Midland Acres in far east Bodden Town.
The basic economics of that arrangement were not complicated: Dart wanted to eliminate the most noxious neighbor to Camana Bay, the islands’ grandest mixed-use development. Dart representatives acknowledge that the nearby dump is the biggest obstacle to selling homes or building a hotel at Camana Bay.
When the Progressives government walked away from Dart, it walked away from $60 million in ready money. Increasingly, that decision appears to have been both highly cavalier and highly political.
Late last year, Minister Bodden indicated the government would be seeking bids for waste management proposals that include recycling and waste-to-energy components, reiterating that his district would remain a special dump-free zone.
The underlying problem with Minister Bodden’s flirtation with waste-to-energy is the technology does not negate the need for a new landfill and will cost, not save, money — and a lot of it.
In 2008, consultants estimated that creating a waste-to-energy facility to mine the dump and handle future waste would require more than $100 million in upfront capital, cost roughly $20 million per year to operate and bring in revenue of about $6.5 million per year for electricity generated. Even then, a new landfill would have be created, either by acquiring property next to the existing dump or obtaining land elsewhere.
Today, facing heightened U.K. scrutiny and restrictions on public finance, the government is even harder-pressed to borrow money or conjure up funds through accounting gimmickry.
There is, however, a glimmer of hope lining the bottom of the public purse: the $50 million sitting in the country’s Environmental Protection Fund.
As this editorial board has opined previously, there is no more appropriate use of that fund than to address the George Town landfill, the country’s biggest and most embarrassing environmental threat.
Now that the government has turned down Dart’s offer, the Environmental Protection Fund is the only obvious source of money to address the problem.
If the government now refuses to earmark that money (which won’t be nearly enough to fund a waste-to-energy solution), and it can’t come up with an alternative source of funds or somehow entice the Darts back to the table, it is, de facto, answering Mr. Linton’s question: Cayman is just lookin’, not buyin’.
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To really speak the truth I am not very familiar with what the plans would be for creating a dump in Bodden Town; however I have listened to talk shows, listened to political talks and listened to public discussions, and what I have come up with is I agree that Cayman is looking and not buying During the past two to three years many verbal promises were made by politicians to persons of the Bodden Town District that this dump would not happen in out Town. But after listening to those promises I was able to determine that they were all political propaganda to obtain votes from ALL parties involved. In short words, people were fooled.
I am no acquaintance of Dart, and whatever we may want to think about him; but since he has been here he has made Cayman a more beautiful place. So I really never expected him to do otherwise with a state-of-the-art dump anywhere on the island. If there is anyone else on the Island who can do a better job, including the Government, I would say come forward now and put money where your mouth is. Something definitely has to be done, because the site of the present dump is just crazy. You have to drive down there and see it, and no one can tell me that the pile of junk and old cars would be brought to Bodden Town District. I just do not believe it. So it is high time the public is told the truth about what would be done. Election is over.
So according to today’s editorial,the present government walked away from 60 million dollars. I say, good for them.
The problem is that many of the Caymanian people do not trust the Dart organisation. Had they acted in a transparent way and approached the whole issue of waste management in a manner which was more palatable to the Caymanian people and its residents, the results may have been different. The same manner was apparent when they sought to convince the people and residents of West bay about giving up the West Bay Road and beach land.
The late Mr. Linton Tibbetts, who I consider one of our great men of vision, may have uttered the words which you suggest but believe me, nothing which he said was ever trite.
Interestingly you managed to come up with a positive suggestion for the environmental fund.It may well be that there is a way forward. Sadly, having access to millions of dollars is not always the answer as Mr. Dart has clearly found out.
There are many Caymanians who do not appreciate being taken for fools and who are not prepared to sell out their country to the highest bidder.
I thought that many Caymanians who do not appreciate being taken for fools have mental capacity to understand that this is more about health effects of residence near hazardous waste landfill site, than selling out their country to the highest bidder. One reader mentioned an epidemic of premature deaths from mysterious cancers. What are the cancer statistics in Grand Cayman?
There are only 50,000 residents on this island. How many generations of them are poisoned while still in mother’s womb?