Editorial
Stinking callousness

Tuesday 1st September, 2020
It looks as though waste management, in this country, had come to mean keeping cities clean while other areas are stinking. Whenever garbage piles up in urban centres, there is a great furore, which prompts municipal authorities to remove it. But hardly anyone cares two hoots about where all the city waste ends up unless there occurs a landfill disaster like the one at Meethotamulla in 2017.
Garbage dumps have made lives miserable for tens of thousands of people who happen to live around them, but successive governments have chosen to shift municipal waste to those places. Following the Meethotamulla disaster, the STF was deployed to suppress public protests against the dumping of Colombo’s municipal waste at other landfills. Governments and local authorities seem to think that wetlands are there to be filled up with garbage so that they can cover up their failure to address the issue of waste disposal.
The Karadiyana landfill is in the news again. It is said to be showing signs of becoming increasingly unstable. Fear is being expressed in environmental circles that it is likely to collapse like the Meethotamulla dump unless remedial measures are adopted urgently. A fire erupted at this waste dump, on Sunday, but firefighters succeeded in dousing it before it engulfed the landfill.
Sitting adjacent to the Weras Ganga, in an ecologically important and vulnerable area, the Karadiyana landfill receives dozens of truckloads of waste daily from about eight local government areas. It cannot take any more waste.
What we are experiencing are the consequences of unplanned urbanisation and the incompetence of successive governments. Cities and towns expand with no concern for proper waste disposal among others. Raw municipal waste is dumped in their rurban fringes at the expense of wetlands and other such environmentally sensitive areas rich in biodiversity.
Garbage has been dumped even in the Muthurajawela wetlands, which must be conserved at any cost. The biggest threat to biodiversity hotspots come from politicians. A ruling party politician’s brother is currently on the run, having destroyed an ecologically sensitive area to build a prawn farm. The police claim they are still looking for him. The present government, came to power, promising to protect national security. But the police, on its watch, cannot even nab a prawn farm owner on the wrong side of the law! Will they be able to track down an elusive terror group?
There was a plan to start a project to convert the Karadiyana waste into energy. It was reported that the project would help maximise energy and minimise environmental impact through the optimisation of the recovery of energy and nutrients in the waste. The people of the area thought a solution had been found, at long last, and looked forward to the implementation of the project only to be disappointed. What has become of this proposed venture, which, we were told, would put an end to the garbage problem at Karadiyana? An answer is called for.
We are not in a position to say whether the proposed project is good or bad. That matter is best left to experts who alone can weigh the pros and cons thereof and decide whether it is an eco-friendly project or not, but the question is why it is not even being spoken of at present while the landfill is becoming unstable, posing a grave threat to the environment.
We suggest that newly appointed Minister of Environment Mahinda Amaraweera inspect the Karadiyana landfill urgently and find out why the proposed project has not been implemented. Is it due to bureaucratic red tape, inefficiency of the officialdom or corruption? We believe the delay is due to a combination of these factors. One can only hope that Amaraweera will do something fast.