With less than two years to go before an ominous federal deadline, Department of Public Works officials are working on a plan to close the Anguilla Landfill on St. Croix and construct a new solid waste management facility.
At a hearing of the Senate Government Operations, Planning and Environmental Protection Committee on St. Croix Thursday, Sonya Nelthropp, technical assistant to the Public Works commissioner on waste management, told senators that the department will soon enter into negotiations with a contractor to begin work on a solid waste facility. At $100 million-plus, the state-of-the-art facility will be the territory’s most costly public project ever.
"We had individuals responding from around the world," Nelthropp said about the bidding process.
Because of the threat scavenging birds and frequent dump fires pose to aircraft using the Henry E. Rohlsen Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration has ordered the Anguilla Landfill closed. If the closure isn’t completed by December 2002, the FAA has threatened to turn millions of dollars of V.I. Port Authority grants into loans.
But in order to close the old dump, a new waste facility must be constructed to dispose of the approximately 150,000 tons of garbage produced each year in the territory. Because of potential air pollution problems, a lack of available land and the lack of federally approved solid waste rules and regulations, Nelthropp said a burning and burying the trash aren’t options.
"The community is vehemently against incinerating as a process," she said, and because of "logistics and space, we cannot do landfills."
The one alternative remaining, Nelthropp said, is a waste-to-energy method called gasification. While both gasification and incineration use heat to destroy garbage, incineration burns organic material in solid waste by introducing air during the process, producing high-temperature gases that must be cooled and cleaned before being released through a smokestack. The byproduct of the process — ash, which consists of metals and silica — must be disposed of in a landfill.
Gasification operates at temperatures almost twice as high as incineration. Because of the high temperatures, all organic compounds are destroyed. The high temperatures are also above the melting point of metal and mineral products found in solid waste. The metal byproduct is processed into pellets that can be used in a smelter.
Garbage from St. Thomas and St. John would be compacted and barged to the facility on St. Croix. Initially, plans called for a facility on both St. Croix and St. Thomas.
Meanwhile, at the committee’s hearing on St. Thomas on Wednesday, Jim Casey, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Virgin Islands coordinator, painted a grim picture of that island’s wastewater system. He said six of Public Works’ wastewater treatment plants are "in very poor operation and management condition."
"The other four . . . are meeting only minimal or acceptable functioning standards," he said.
Casey said the Charlotte Amalie Wastewater Treatment Plant hasn’t been functional for "many months now."
Back on St. Croix, however, sewage problems are improving somewhat, said Dean Plaskett, commissioner of the Department of Planning and Natural Resources, the agency that has oversight of Public Works’ waste handling operations.
"The situation is much better than it was a year ago or two years ago," Plaskett said. "There is still problems, not everything has been solved. But we’re moving in the right direction."
Ironically, a glaring example of the problems faced by Public Works was a sewer main that broke Thursday not far from the Senate chambers in Frederiksted. Acting Public Works Commissioner Wayne Callwood said a force main in a field adjacent to St. Patrick School broke.
A similar break occurred in the same area almost exactly a year ago, causing the school to close for a week and more than 100,000 gallons a day of sewage to be discharged into the sea. Because of the current break, Callwood advised the public from swimming in the waters near the Ann E. Abramson Pier, where visiting cruise ships call when visiting St. Croix.
In other committee action on Wednesday, senators unanimously passed a bill allowing DPNR enforcement officers to carry weapons and arrest those who violate conservation laws. Under the bill, DPNR officers could issue "conservation tickets" and levy fines against violators.
Revenues from the tickets would go into the Fish and Game Fund. Enforcement officers must be graduates of the V.I. Police Academy, according Plaskett. The bill now goes before the Rules Committee.

With less than two years to go before an ominous federal deadline, Department of Public Works officials are working on a plan to close the Anguilla Landfill on St. Croix and construct a new solid waste management facility.
At a hearing of the Senate Government Operations, Planning and Environmental Protection Committee on St. Croix Thursday, Sonya Nelthropp, technical assistant to the Public Works commissioner on waste management, told senators that the department will soon enter into negotiations with a contractor to begin work on a solid waste facility. At $100 million-plus, the state-of-the-art facility will be the territory’s most costly public project ever.
"We had individuals responding from around the world," Nelthropp said about the bidding process.
Because of the threat scavenging birds and frequent dump fires pose to aircraft using the Henry E. Rohlsen Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration has ordered the Anguilla Landfill closed. If the closure isn’t completed by December 2002, the FAA has threatened to turn millions of dollars of V.I. Port Authority grants into loans.
But in order to close the old dump, a new waste facility must be constructed to dispose of the approximately 150,000 tons of garbage produced each year in the territory. Because of potential air pollution problems, a lack of available land and the lack of federally approved solid waste rules and regulations, Nelthropp said a burning and burying the trash aren’t options.
"The community is vehemently against incinerating as a process," she said, and because of "logistics and space, we cannot do landfills."
The one alternative remaining, Nelthropp said, is a waste-to-energy method called gasification. While both gasification and incineration use heat to destroy garbage, incineration burns organic material in solid waste by introducing air during the process, producing high-temperature gases that must be cooled and cleaned before being released through a smokestack. The byproduct of the process — ash, which consists of metals and silica — must be disposed of in a landfill.
Gasification operates at temperatures almost twice as high as incineration. Because of the high temperatures, all organic compounds are destroyed. The high temperatures are also above the melting point of metal and mineral products found in solid waste. The metal byproduct is processed into pellets that can be used in a smelter.
Garbage from St. Thomas and St. John would be compacted and barged to the facility on St. Croix. Initially, plans called for a facility on both St. Croix and St. Thomas.
Meanwhile, at the committee’s hearing on St. Thomas on Wednesday, Jim Casey, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Virgin Islands coordinator, painted a grim picture of that island’s wastewater system. He said six of Public Works’ wastewater treatment plants are "in very poor operation and management condition."
"The other four . . . are meeting only minimal or acceptable functioning standards," he said.
Casey said the Charlotte Amalie Wastewater Treatment Plant hasn’t been functional for "many months now."
Back on St. Croix, however, sewage problems are improving somewhat, said Dean Plaskett, commissioner of the Department of Planning and Natural Resources, the agency that has oversight of Public Works’ waste handling operations.
"The situation is much better than it was a year ago or two years ago," Plaskett said. "There is still problems, not everything has been solved. But we’re moving in the right direction."
Ironically, a glaring example of the problems faced by Public Works was a sewer main that broke Thursday not far from the Senate chambers in Frederiksted. Acting Public Works Commissioner Wayne Callwood said a force main in a field adjacent to St. Patrick School broke.
A similar break occurred in the same area almost exactly a year ago, causing the school to close for a week and more than 100,000 gallons a day of sewage to be discharged into the sea. Because of the current break, Callwood advised the public from swimming in the waters near the Ann E. Abramson Pier, where visiting cruise ships call when visiting St. Croix.
In other committee action on Wednesday, senators unanimously passed a bill allowing DPNR enforcement officers to carry weapons and arrest those who violate conservation laws. Under the bill, DPNR officers could issue "conservation tickets" and levy fines against violators.
Revenues from the tickets would go into the Fish and Game Fund. Enforcement officers must be graduates of the V.I. Police Academy, according Plaskett. The bill now goes before the Rules Committee.

The St. Croix Environmental Association will sponsor its eighth annual Earth Day Eco-Fair from 9:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. daily Wednesday, April 18 through Friday, April 20 at St.George Village Botanical Garden.
This year's theme is "Taking Pride in the Virgin Islands."
Ecology-friendly presenters are being sought. Please call Tysha St. Jules or Joyce Atkinson at 773-1989 for more information.

The St. Croix Environmental Association will sponsor its eighth annual Earth Day Eco-Fair from 9:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. daily Wednesday, April 18 through Friday, April 20 at St.George Village Botanical Garden.
This year's theme is "Taking Pride in the Virgin Islands." Ecology-friendly presenters are being sought.
Please call Tysha St. Jules or Joyce Atkinson at 773-1989 for more information.

Harbour night, a Caribbean street festival, will take place 7 p.m.to midnight Wednesday, March 14 on the waterfront at Strand Street in Frederiksted.
Frederiksted will welcome 3,500 cruise ship passengers and crew from the Carnival cruise ship "Victory." Special attraction for the evening will be the introduction of the "Zappy" a folding, electric-powered scooter, along with the portable "SeaScooter," the nautical version of a Zappy.
Everyone is invited to come and do a test drive.
Entertainment for the evening will be provided by Dem Boys, Jazzy Blue, Velma Cruz, The Karamu Afi Dance and Drum Troupe, and Willard John's Mocko Jumbies.
Food, art and crafts vendors will on be on hand as well as the St. Croix Animal Shelter, The American Red Cross, The Deaf Coalition, and the Boys and Girls Clubs. Non-profit groups are encouraged to register and participate at no cost. Call Hugh at 772-1624 for more information.
A parking ban on Strand St. in Frederiksted between 5 p.m. and midnight will be in effect. Cars in violation will be towed.
Please call 772-4000 for more details.

Harbour night, a Caribbean street festival, will take place 7 p.m. to midnight Wednesday, March 14 on the waterfront at Strand Street in Frederiksted.
Frederiksted will welcome 3,500 cruise ship passengers and crew from the Carnival cruise ship "Victory." Special attraction for the evening will be the introduction of the "Zappy" a folding, electric-powered scooter, along with the portable "SeaScooter," the nautical version of a Zappy.
Everyone is invited to come and do a test drive.
Entertainment for the evening will be provided by Dem Boys, Jazzy Blue, Velma Cruz, The Karamu Afi Dance and Drum Troupe, and Willard John's Mocko Jumbies.
Food, art and crafts vendors will on be on hand as well as the St. Croix Animal Shelter, The American Red Cross, The Deaf Coalition, and the Boys and Girls Clubs. Non-profit groups are encouraged to register and participate at no cost. Call Hugh at 772-1624 for more information.
A parking ban on Strand St. in Frederiksted between 5 p.m. and midnight will be in effect. Cars in violation will be towed.
Please call 772-4000 for more details.

Probably the most talked-about-before-seeing movie in a long time, director Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic," a complicated look at America's drug trade, comes with high expectations. No pun intended.
It's a big, sprawling complicated epic that The New Yorker magazine calls "tremendous stuff from the first shot to the last." It layers story upon story with deftly constructed plot twists, and, by all accounts, excellent performances. The cast is led by Michael Douglas as Robert Wakefield, the nation's newly appointed drug czar, along with Catherine Zeta-Jones, (Douglas' real-life new bride), Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, Dennis Quaid, Luis Guzman and Erika Christensen.
The two hour 20 minute movie is based on the 1980's British televison six hour miniseries, "Traffik." The only real criticism of the movie is cramming that much action into so little time.
The films shifts locales from the august halls of Washington politics, to border police in Mexico, with much of the action taking place in border town San Diego.
The action starts at a Mexican drug bust where a couple of Tijuana cops find themselves arrested by Mexico's corrupt drug czar. The war then shifts to full throttle where DEA agents Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Luis Guzman) have taken down a big time drug smuggler and handed him immunity in exchange for an even bigger drug lord, Ayala, whose wife Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) innocent at this point to her husband's activities, quickly wises up and tries to hold her misbegotten husband's shaky drug empire together.
Now this is just a preview of what really goes on ranging from Pakistan's poppy fields, back to Mexico and, of course, San Diego, with complicated corruption as a steady narrative. Then, there's Wakefield's shock when he discovers his own daughter (Erika Christensen) is an addict.
Some critical folks say Soderbergh may have outsmarted himself this time, taking on too much. Others, most others, say no.
It is written by Stephen Gaghan, and rated R for pervasive drug content, strong language, violence and some sexuality.
It is playing at Market Place East theatres.

A stretch of roadway on St. Thomas is a bit cleaner Thursday as staff of several government agencies headed west and tackled the removal of abandoned vehicles along Julian Jackson Drive.
The cleanup task force headed by Daryl Lewis removed vehicles from the area near the old airport turnoff to well past the area adjacent to AMCO auto sales.
At the site on the second day of the cleanup, Lewis said the latest removal of junked vehicles is a combined effort of the departments of Property and Procurement, Public Works and the V.I. Port Authority. "We have removed the old vehicles several times only to have them returned by the mechanic shops in the area," he said. "We are going to put down some planks to block vehicles being placed here again."
Lewis said clearing the area along the northern perimeter fence of the airport runway is the first step in roadway expansion planned for the Lindbergh Bay area and part of a requirement by the federal government that areas in and around airport operations remain clear.
"They are about to continue the development of this roadway, so this is the first step in preparing for that expansion," Lewis said.
The effort to rid the island of junked vehicles is hampered by strict conditions now in place that prevent the towing of old vehicles to the dump. "We are in limbo with the oil and gas restrictions at the dump so we have had to develop a plan to drain the oil, tires, batteries and fluids before taking the cars to the dump," Lewis said. He encouraged residents who have junked vehicles in and around their neighborhoods to contact the Public Works department.
"They can contact Ms. Janet Gross at PWD, she can take the information and we will get to the removal of the vehicles," he said.
The efforts to collect and haul away the junked vehicles began last year after the Anti Litter and Beautification Commission chipped in funding to the purchase of a tow truck which since has hauled away more than 400 abandoned vehicles.
Lewis said it's been a joint effort all along. "The wrecker was donated by the ALBC and its been on the job ever since. It's all about cleaning up the island," he said.
Manpower is provided by two inmates from the Bureau of Corrections.

All V.I. post offices save one are now open from 7:30 a.m. to noon on Saturdays, according to V.I. Postmaster Louis A. Jackson, who announced that and other operational changes recently.
The new hours went into effect March 3. Unaffected is the Havensight Postal Store on St. Thomas, which will still be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays and holidays.
Letter carriers will still perform Express Mail delivery every day. For those with post office boxes:
– on St. Thomas, the Aubrey C. Ottley Post Office in Estate Thomas will have centralized delivery of Express Mail received on Sundays and holidays, including those addressed to boxes at the Veterans Drive, Emancipation Garden and East End stations. These will be available for delivery at the Estate Thomas post office between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
– on St. Croix, incoming Express Mail for boxes in Frederiksted will be delivered at the Kingshill Annex. Kingshill Post Office will perform their same incoming Express Mail delivery. Carriers from Christiansted and Frederiksted will deliver from the Kingshill Airport Annex.
– on St. John, retail operations will remain the same; window hours are from 7:30 a.m. to noon Saturday. On Sundays and holidays, Express Mail delivery to P.O. boxes stays the same, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Jackson also informed customers of all V.I. post offices and stations that all incoming first class mail received daily will be distributed to P.O. boxes by 11 a.m.
For more information, call your local post office or the postmaster at 774-1950, ext. 11.

All V.I. post offices are now open from 7:30 a.m. to noon on Saturdays, according to V.I. Postmaster Louis A. Jackson, who announced that and other operational changes recently.
The new hours went into effect March 3. Unaffected is the Havensight Postal Store on St. Thomas, which will still be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays and holidays.
Letter carriers will still perform Express Mail delivery every day. For those with post office boxes:
– on St. Thomas, the Aubrey C. Ottley Post Office in Estate Thomas will have centralized delivery of Express Mail received on Sundays and holidays, including those addressed to boxes at the Veterans Drive, Emancipation Garden and East End stations. These will be available for delivery at the Estate Thomas post office between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
– on St. Croix, incoming Express Mail for boxes in Frederiksted will be delivered at the Kingshill Annex. Kingshill Post Office will perform their same incoming Express Mail delivery. Carriers from Christiansted and Frederiksted will deliver from the Kingshill Airport Annex.
– on St. John, retail operations will remain the same; window hours are from 7:30 a.m. to noon Saturday. On Sundays and holidays, Express Mail delivery to P.O. boxes stays the same, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Jackson also informed customers of all V.I. post offices and stations that all incoming first class mail received daily will be distributed to P.O. boxes by 11 a.m.
For more information, call your local post office or the postmaster at 774-1950, ext. 11.