The George Town dump: 37 years of broken promises

The George Town dump has burst into flames. Again.

Once again, the Cayman Islands Fire Service and the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service had to jump into action to battle the fire and keep the public safe from the smoke billowing across the Esterley Tibbetts Highway and through residential neighbourhoods in George Town.

Once again, the Cayman Islands Government’s media professionals had to disseminate vital information to the public, including a health advisory, advice for residents in areas affected by smoke, information about road and school closures and regular updates on the progress of firefighters in putting out the blaze. They also had to tell us that two firefighters had to be hospitalised as a result of their efforts.

Once again, tourists and residents of Grand Cayman were not only subjected to the health hazard of toxic smoke but also had to endure inconvenience and lost productivity of traffic jams, school closures and cancelled events.

Once again, the Red Cross had to open emergency shelters for residents displaced by the toxic plumes of smoke invading their homes.

Once again, millions of gallons of water had to be sprayed onto the pile of poisonous garbage creating leachate that eventually will find its way into the water table and to the North Sound, creating another impact to residents, tourists and the environment as a result.

And once again, the elected government has responded with statements that basically amount to platitudes.

Let us be clear about this: We’re not speaking about only the current elected government. We’re also speaking about the previous government administrations for the past 37 years. That’s how long successive governments have been in dereliction of their duties to the people of Grand Cayman to resolve the toxic mound of putrid and festering rubbish that we often call – in a much too light-hearted and accepting way – ‘Mount Trashmore’, which is now a mountain range of three distinct peaks.

In August 2014, the Compass wrote a lengthy article about the George Town landfill with the title: ‘25 years of broken promises’. There’s a paragraph in that article that reads:

“By the end of the 1980s, Cayman’s legislators realized that a problem was developing with the George Town Landfill, and over the past 25 years a steady stream of politicians has discussed the issue, formed committees and commissioned studies to investigate solutions, and made promises that haven’t been kept.”

Now that we’re in 2026, let’s update that to span to 37 years of broken promises. Elected government after government has promised to find a solution to the landfill problem, and each has left office having not done that.

Missed opportunities

Cayman came close to finding a solution in October 2017 when a Dart consortium was selected as the preferred bidder by an Alden McLaughlin-led government to deliver an integrated solid waste management system that would have involved capping and remediating the current landfill, and creating a waste-to-energy facility and recycling centre called ‘ReGen’ on a different, nearby site.

The Dart-led consortium had been selected as the preferred bidder because the then-government said its proposal best followed the recommendations in the outline business case – which the government commissioned at significant expense – and offered the greatest value for money. The contract was to be awarded on a design, build, finance, operate and maintain basis and the landfill was then going to be operated as a public-private partnership.

In July 2024, a Juliana O’Connor-Connolly-led government decided to cancel the ReGen project and later paid Dart the $17.7 million owed for the early works that it had already completed, including capping a portion of the George Town landfill.

Key elements of work that Dart did before the government abandoned the project was to cap and cover the two main mounds at the landfill – which, by the way, were not the areas that caught fire last week.

What’s next?

Almost two years after the Cayman Islands Government cancelled the ReGen project deal, Grand Cayman finds itself in a familiar situation: The dump has caught fire and the current administration, the National Coalition For Caymanians, is basically at square one when it comes to a long-term solution for the problem.

However, since the fire started last Thursday, the NCFC has suddenly upgraded its ‘medium term’ plan to include a new lined landfill somewhere else on the site.

Minister for Health, Environment and Sustainability Katherine Ebanks-Wilks has acknowledged that none of the $6 million capital budget assigned for the dump over the next two years is geared towards that goal. However, she said there is money in the budget to begin the business case process both for recycling and composting facilities and a new lined landfill, which will extend its life for a decade while a long-term solution is determined.

While the recycling facilities along with a new medical waste incinerator and compactor for the Brac merited a mention in Ebanks-Wilks’ Finance Committee speech following the budget presentations in November last year, Friday, the day after the most recent fire, was the first we heard of a “new, fully lined landfill facility” on the same site.

We have to wonder whether the plan was in motion before the night of the fire, or if it came as a result of the blaze.

Regardless, Ebanks-Wilks said on Sunday night that funding for that project will not be sought until the 2028/29 budget cycle, which means even the interim solution might not start construction until almost two years from now. In the meantime, the threat of more fires will continue while the long-term solution remains for this or some other elected government to deal with – or ignore again – at a later date.

With regard to the long-term solution, what we heard from Ebanks-Wilks last November is the concept of a plan that we’re told “is not ISWMS 2.0” but that the government won’t have to “start from scratch” even if the plan “will begin with the required three-stage business case for the new solid waste facility.” That sounds pretty much like starting from scratch to us.

We also heard that waste diversion was a key element to the NCFC’s “overall solution” to solid waste management, but we note that no money was budgeted for the actual construction of new facilities for green waste or recyclable materials waste.

Ebanks-Wilks has referenced in the past the removal of accumulated tyres from the dump further to a Request for Proposal in 2024 (yes, 2024), but we can see from the images of the recent blaze that thousands upon thousands of tyres remain on site, another potential catastrophic fire risk.

We do wonder what if those tyres had caught fire. We would probably still be under a plume of black, thick, toxic smoke like the great tyre fires of 2013 and also 2020. The Cayman Islands Fire Service has regulations for storing those highly flammable materials, which include mandating maximum tyre pile sizes and distances between them and the other mounds. However, it appears those regulations only apply to non-government-related entities, as there looks to be one continuous, giant mass of tangled tires accumulated at the landfill all along the Esterley Tibbetts Highway.

The cost of doing nothing

There are several reasons why the numerous solutions proffered to Grand Cayman’s growing solid waste management catastrophe over the past 37 years have failed, but the main reason is money. Elected governments want to spend their budgets on flashy things like new schools, new roads and new parks. Elected governments don’t want to spend a good portion of their budget or introduce fees on something as unalluring as a landfill or a solid waste management system.

But here’s the trouble with ignoring the long-term situation: The problem is not going to go away. It will only get worse if nothing is done, and it’s only going to get more expensive to fix as more time passes.

The George Town landfill is more than just an eyesore. It’s a public health hazard, even when it’s not on fire. And when it is on fire, it also damages Cayman’s reputation, it negatively affects productivity, causes severe inconvenience to Grand Cayman’s residents and can ruin the vacation experience of any tourist staying in the area of Seven Mile Beach affected by the smoke.

The only way we’re not writing a similar editorial in 2039 bemoaning 50 years of broken promises about the landfill is if one elected government does the right thing for the country by swallowing the bitter pill of allocating a good chunk of its budget to finally address the issue.

We call on the NCFC government to show the courage and resolve to do the right thing for the people of the Cayman Islands and finally progress a long-term solution to Grand Cayman’s solid waste management problem. If they don’t, they’ll simply become another of a long list of elected governments that failed to fulfil the promises they’ve made to address one of the most dangerous threats to Cayman’s future.