Sascha Wil­son

 A fire which start­ed on Fri­day at the For­res Park land­fill in Clax­ton Bay is af­fect­ing res­i­dents and road users. In a re­lease, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) ad­vised the pub­lic and peo­ple in the vicin­i­ty to ex­er­cise cau­tion due to the smoke.

The re­lease stat­ed that at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4 pm man­age­ment was no­ti­fied of a fire com­menc­ing on the east­ern side of the top­ping point.

SWM­COL's Emer­gency re­sponse team and the CEO were on site work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion, the re­lease stat­ed. The com­pa­ny apol­o­gised for the in­con­ve­nience.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the land­fill yes­ter­day, a SWM­COL team was on site. An em­ploy­ee who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said they be­lieve the fire was de­lib­er­ate­ly set, but in­ves­ti­ga­tions were on­go­ing.

He said a team was at the Spring­vale com­mu­ni­ty con­duct­ing air qual­i­ty test­ing.  At the time Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty, no smoke was vis­i­ble. How­ev­er, res­i­dents said they were fre­quent­ly af­fect­ed by smoke com­ing from the dump. Res­i­dent Or­land Cyrus said, "The smoke reach all here, and it is af­fect­ing us be­cause it is like the smoke is in we body." He said the com­mu­ni­ty was af­fect­ed by the smoke every oth­er week, some­times twice a week. De­pend­ing on the den­si­ty of the smoke, res­i­dents would some­times leave the com­mu­ni­ty and re­turn when the smoke dis­si­pates. He said there were sick­ly peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty.

While some peo­ple be­lieve the dump should be re­lo­cat­ed, he did not think that was nec­es­sary.

"They could leave the dump. I find they could try to con­trol the smoke. You see when cop­per burn­ing the scent is some­thing like that." He said that some­times the smoke af­fects their vis­i­bil­i­ty. "It could be mid­day but when smoke there it could look like 6 o'clock in the evening," he com­plained.  

Clax­ton Bay/Pointe-a-Pierre coun­cil­lor Na­dia Khan-Mo­hammed said she would re­ceive com­plaints from res­i­dents in com­mu­ni­ties miles away be­ing af­fect­ed by the smoke and pun­gent odour. She said about three months ago, SWM­COL ad­ver­tised re­new­ing the li­cence for ex­pand­ing the dump fa­cil­i­ties.

Com­plain­ing that the com­pa­ny has not had a con­sul­ta­tion with res­i­dents, Khan-Mo­hammed said there were al­ready sev­er­al is­sues, in­clud­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, at the dump. She said man­age­ment should fo­cus on im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures and poli­cies to prop­er­ly man­age the dump. At­tempts to reach SWM­COL's Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Spe­cial­ist Sel­ma Elie for a re­sponse from the com­pa­ny were un­suc­cess­ful.