The sixth time is a charm.
Government earned $420,000 last week when 6,000 tonnes of
scrap metal was loaded on a barge and shipped off to Tampa, Florida.
Cardinal D. submitted the successful tender back in July to
buy the scrap from Government at $70 a tonne.
It’s the second time the company has taken scrap metal away
from our shores, freeing up space at the George Town Landfill.
That scrap metal consists of wrecked cars, debris from
Hurricane Ivan and an assortment of other metals.
The last time scrap metal was removed, it was sent to a
metal processing factory in China to be melted and sorted.
Some of the remaining metal is left over from an aborted
effort to remove all the scrap in 2007 when Matrix, a company jointly owned by
a Caymanian and a Canadian owner, signed a $1.2 million tender contract to
remove the debris, but ultimately paid only a quarter of that sum to the
government for the scrap metal. That contract was cancelled in
September 2007.
The latest tender was the sixth time bids have been
submitted to remove metal from Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman.
We have to wonder why it has taken so long for us to get rid
of unwanted scrap metal, especially that from Hurricane Ivan, which hit Grand
Cayman way back in 2004.
We’re glad the scrap metal has been removed, but there is
still scrap metal – old vehicles, derelict appliances and other metal –
littering all three Islands.
The Cayman Islands needs to do a better job of getting rid of
unwanted materials such as scrap metal.
It frees up space at the overwhelmed landfill, also known as
Mount Trashmore.
There’s more that we can do to keep trash out of the
landfill. The Cayman Islands needs a proper recycling programme. We are also
still waiting for the deal between Dart and the Government to go through so
that the landfill can be capped and remediated and the new location put into
use.
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When the original scrap metal contract went out to tender in 2007 a New Zealand company with specialist experience in clearing up after events like Hurricane Ivan submitted detailed plans, including a DVD showing their operations, that would have solved a lot of the current problems.
Their proposal (which I have seen) was not for a one-off clearance exercise but for the creation of an on-going re-cycling operation that would initially sort and remove the post-Ivan scrap metal then be run as a self-financing, sustainable re-cycling programme covering all re-usable materials. It was based on experience gained after the Cook Islands were devastated by a Typhoon.
This option would have created long-term employment and revenue for the Cayman Islands Government who, under the proposals, would have run the operation.
The submission was ignored, the senior civil servant to whom the material was sent never even acknowledged receipt of it. In fact this all only came to light as the Matrix fiasco unravelled and I was contacted by the company concerned but even when it was all made public nothing was done. The impression given by CIG was they weren’t interested because this was NIH (not invented here) and those in power knew better.
It’s nearly 20 years since I first visited the Cayman Islands. In that time there have been a lot of changes but re-cycling is one area where things are still stuck firmly in the past.