St. Lucia Land Fill Site - filled to the brim.

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St. Lucia Land Fill Site - filled to the brim.

By: Petrus Viviers
083 584 7473
28 March 2007

It is clear the St. Lucia's fragile Eco System has been over exposed since the acquisition of World Heritage Site Status in December 1999. Neither the Authorities, Rate Payers Associations and Environment can cope with the influx of Developers cutting into their piece of the dream. With a small economy based infra structure St. Lucia Estuary, the town's resources are drawing to an
end. The regional Districts Water supply to the town is inadequate. The town has outgrown its energy supply in the past five years. Now the Land fill site has collapsed under pressure of new development.

St. Lucia has always made use of a very small land fill site that had to rely on recycling to meet the demands of waste disposal of the ever growing community. Glass where sorted by color and on a regular basis removed by recycling companies. Garden refuse has been burned on a weekly basis to make space for the next load. Home refuse where sorted into burnable and non burnable rubbish. With great effort from the residents a balance where maintained not to
swamp this land fill site.

Focus has shifted from the less demanding domestic tourist to the more luxury market that is filled by eco tourist. This happened after the 4x4 ban that starved St. Lucia from its traditional income source. Following in this wake where the rapidly expanding Bed and Breakfast Market. Scruples developers flocked in from all over the world to explore this market. Many
holiday homes that where occupied for approximately 100 days per year where bought up and changed into money spinning endeavors turning thousands of bed nights per year.

Local developer has demolished an existing residential house because it did not fit into the plan of his new up market accommodation establishment. With no Idea where to put these tons of building rubble and with out the knowledge of the working of the towns infra structure, he had no other option to dump all this rubble, with steel, wire and plumbing intact onto the local land fill site. With in two days the land fill site at St. Lucia Estuary where totally swamped with un recyclable building rubble. At time of this publication he had no intention or contingency plan for this mega tons of unusable waste.

Building rubble broken down into bricks and concrete lumps are a valuable housing commodity for Khula Village and Duku Duku South. These huge un broken slabs of rubble has no use in this under developed community. It appears that it is not the first time that said developer has used earth moving equipment to run spoils from his development to the small land fill site on the
border of the Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park World Heritage Site.

Braking this down into smaller manageable size lumps would fit into the waste management plan of the town and would have lead to valuable job creation for the neighboring communities.
Renting of large earth moving equipment only leads to rapid degrading of valuable road infra structure. The Zulu's religion and tradition is based on respect. Respect for ones neighbors,
their things and their homes. A very power full leader once said. "When in Rome do as the Romans do". With only hope and perseverance can we wish for some of this diligence to rub off on the influx of the mighty Western Culture.