The jewel in South Africa’s tourism crown, Cape Town, faces a filthy future as the city’s six major landfill sites are expected to reach their capacity in the next five years.
”We have a serious crisis. Imagine what the city will look like in 2010, when refuse trucks collect dirt and have nowhere to put it,” said Saliem Haider, acting head of disposal in the city’s solid-waste department.
Of the six landfill sites — Coastal Park, Vissershoek, Bellville, Faure, Brackenfell and Swartklip — two have already been shut down.
After the closure of Swartklip and Brackenfell, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste have been transferred to the remaining sites, placing them all under severe pressure and considerably shortening their lifespan.
For example, Coastal Park has a recommended lifespan of 15 years and Vissershoek six years without a proposed northern extension.
But now, with Faure expected to close next year, the lifespan of the city’s two biggest sites is only five years each.
The city is conducting at least 13 specialist studies, which include the impact of air and groundwater pollution and infrastructure accessibility, on two sites for a proposed regional landfill site — one at Kalbaskraal and another south of Atlantis.
”These sites will only become operational at the earliest in 2011, which means that in 2010 the city won’t have an inch of legal space to put its waste,” said Haider.
He said the city needs to buy at least 500ha of land for the new regional site, which will operate for a minimum of 30 years.
Compounding the precarious situation is the possible closure in September next year of the Bellville South landfill site.
The city has successfully appealed a provincial decision more than two years ago supporting the closure, but now needs clarity on the way forward from provincial environment minister Tasneem Essop.
Essop’s spokesperson, Lynnette Johns, said the minister will visit the site next week to acquaint herself with the process.
The Bellville South site is also the proposed site for a pilot methane-extraction project. Methane is to be extracted from the landfill and sold as carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce harmful emissions and provide an alternative energy source to surrounding industries.
Haider said profits from a successful project — studies show success is likely — could help pay for the rehabilitation of the landfill site, estimated to cost about R75-million.
The community has campaigned over the years for the site’s closure, which besides being an eyesore is also claimed to have increased health problems in the area.
Haider said the city is against the closure of the site because of the knock-on effect it will have on the Bellville site, currently handling double the amount of waste at 600 000 tonnes a year after the closure of Brackenfell landfill site.
”The city can’t afford to close the site prematurely and has to address the concerns of the community of Belhar at the same time.”
Haider said Cape Town is on average dealing with a 6% increase in waste yearly, up from 1,5-million tonnes in 1998 to 2,1-million tonnes last year.
The increase is despite attempts at waste minimisation using crushing of builder’s rubble, ”chipping” of green waste and other recycling initiatives.
Asked about other alternatives such as incinerators, Haider said exorbitant prices mean they are not economically viable.
It costs about R100 a tonne to dispose of waste at a landfill, in contrast to the whopping R3 000 to R4 000 per tonne to incinerate.
”The world is looking for an alternative to landfills, which remain the cheapest form of waste disposal at the moment.” — Sapa