WASTE MANAGEMENT at Vryheid’s municipal dumpsite has completely collapsed again, the situation made worse by the facility being on fire… again.
The fire apparently started last week, and apparently there were unsuccessful attempts by the municipality to put it out. But given that there has been no proper waste management at the site for years now, and that the town’s rubbish has been simply spread out and roughly compacted into layers upon layers, there is enough fuel there for the fire to smolder for months. A few years ago one winter, it smoldered for the best part of six months.
And because the site consists of layers of rubbish metres thick, once the fire takes hold of a substrata, no amount of water sprayed feebly by a fire tender will reach the fire let alone put it out.
And daily, more and more rubbish is accumulating.
On Tuesday, with smoke seeping from a number of spots towards the southern side of the site, mountains of un-managed rubbish is piling up everywhere else.
There was no evidence of any control. Domestic and garden waste runs into piles of builders’ rubble, and a newly dumped pile of discarded asbestos ceiling boards was the cleanest pile of all. It is illegal to dump asbestos at this site.
Meanwhile, the new area under development has yet to be commissioned.
Will it solve Vryheid’s dumping woes?
Not if it’s not managed…
Not if it’s managed like the old site.
Another Article you might want to read;Â Vryheid dumpsite- is it going back wards again?.
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