None of it was supposed to be garbage. Yet, for weeks, heaps of discarded possessions grew to towering heights across Puerto Rico. In Levittown, a suburb west of San Juan, residents said they started piling trash on the sidewalk the day after Hurricane Maria hit, per instructions from government officials. Waterlogged couches, televisions and refrigerators commingled with toys, clothing and books. The fetid wall of garbage stretched on for blocks, attracting rodents and mosquitoes and raising public health concerns.
Finally, after weeks of waiting, clean-up is underway in Levittown and elsewhere on the island. But at least one local environmentalist is worried about what will happen after the garbage hits the island’s overflowing landfills.
Experts have warned of potentially devastating impacts from Maria on the island’s precarious infrastructure. Puerto Rico’s solid waste management system has been on the brink for years. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, one year before Hurricane Maria made landfall, most of Puerto Rico’s 29 operating landfills were beyond capacity. And, nearly half had been ordered closed amid concerns over risks posed to nearby soil and groundwater, the agency said.
Following the storm, as the island begins to clean up, the problem is even worse: by some estimates, Puerto Rico is generating several times the amount of garbage it had been sending to the landfill previously.
The island’s waste management crisis was far from Charlie Dominguez’s mind as he started pulling wet, smelly kitchen cabinets from his home. He threw them on the pile across the street from his home and watched the heap grow day by day. Then a mosquito outbreak came and he started worrying about disease.
By his count it took 34 days for crews to start removing garbage to his great relief. Finally, amid mounting losses, a sign of progress.
“Better late than never,” the 24-year-old lifelong Levittown resident told CNN. “You could almost say it’s like starting fresh.”
The Army Corps of Engineers has hired a local contractor to sift through debris in some of the island’s incorporated areas, including Levittown, to separate hazardous waste from organic material. The debris is bound for landfills on the island and the Environmental Protection Agency will handle disposal of the hazardous waste.
But Juan Rosario worries there is little to no room left in Puerto Rico’s landfills for Maria’s debris.
“We were in a huge mess before Maria. Now the mess is becoming a crisis,” said Rosario, executive director of Amanecer 2025, a local nonprofit that advocates for environmental issues.
The EPA began its direct involvement to address the landfills in 2002, working with the Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board to develop legal agreements. However, the agency has acknowledged that “it is not practical to immediately close most landfills,” and has focused on prioritizing those posing “the greatest threat to the environment and to people’s health.”
Since 2007, the EPA has reached agreements with 12 municipalities and other owners and operators of the landfills to improve operations and put them on schedules for closure. The agency said the orders go above and beyond landfill closures by including composting and recycling programs. But some environmental groups say the orders don’t go far enough and lack meaningful enforcement mechanisms, allowing for the operation of illegal landfills.
They cite the Toa Baja landfill — which receives waste from Levittown — as a prime example. It was under such an agreement to permanently close by 2014. It was amended in 2012 to give operators more time to come up with a new schedule for closure, but an actual date has yet to be decided.
To read the full story, visit http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/23/health/puerto-rico-cleanup-landfills-maria/index.html.