Dumpsite’s looking better but…

WINTER is here and (hold thumbs) the municipal dumpsite has yet to catch fire.

During the last two winters, the dumpsite has caught fire and burned or smouldered for months before being put out. Clouds of toxic smoke have greeted Vryheid and Bhekuzulu residents each winter morning, as a smog settling on the lower parts of town. This year, so far, that has not happened.

Yet.

There is plenty of fuel up at the site, hundreds of tons of fuel. The site does indeed look much improved, but the established method of managing waste by burying it is not being carried out. Theoretically, and ideally, each days waste is tipped into a huge hole, called a cell, and then compacted and covered with a layer of earth.

Vryheid’s dumpsite appears to have had all the holes excavated that is possible. No part of the dumpsite has not already got a filled cell beneath it.

So, daily it looks like, the rubbish is spread out. There appear to be none of the usual mountains of rubbish, just plains of it, acres of fairly flat rubbish which presumably will be covered over at some time with a layer of earth, like a hideous biological sandwich.

Recycling continues at the site. There is still a population there who rely on what they can salvage and sell to the recyclers, and no doubt hundreds of tons of materials is removed from the site in this way.

The area outside the site, on the right as one approaches the main gate, has been cleared of rubbish that had accumulated there. Some of it is buried under the cleared area. But as Cllr Heyns has pointed out,  efforts to keep the approach to the site clear of rubbish are being thwarted by indiscriminate dumping alongside the approach road.

Cllr Heyns warns that the fine for this practise has recently been increased to R2,000.