THE DISPUTE between the National Solid Waste Management Authority and the Riverton Meadows Trucking and Disposal Co-operative may have been settled for now but the effects are still being felt by hapless citizens who happen to live within range of wind-blown smoke from the authority's burning landfill at Riverton City in east St. Andrew, near the city's western limits.
Large sections of the Corporate Area of Kingston and St. Andrew, especially the western reaches, and the municipality of Portmore, south and south-eastern St. Catherine, have been waking up for the last several mornings, shrouded in smoke.
The smoke is so thick at times that citizens say they get the impression that they are in a smoke-filled room, victims of deadly, inescapable passive smoke. And before the sun begins to climb, even the lovely hills which form a backdrop to sections of Kingston, are blanketed by the smoke.
Pity the hundreds of unfortunate people, with asthma and other respiratory ailments, who have to go through this daily and seemingly with no end in sight. Pity, too, the frail infants who are at risk from what should be their friendly, healthful natural environment.
Jamaica is already beset by problems of heavy rates of deforestation; coastal waters polluted by industrial waste, sewage, and oil spills; damage to coral reefs; air pollution in Kingston resulting from vehicle emissions.
And, of course, the Government will boast that it is party to environmental agreements and treaties covering biodiversity, climate change, desertification, endangered species, hazardous wastes, marine dumping, marine life conservation, ozone layer protection, ship pollution and wetlands, and that the International Seabed Authority has its headquarters in Jamaica. Our representatives have been to every global environmental conference from Brazil to Kyoto, Japan. And, of course, we are rightly proud of our own National Environment and Planning Agency.
But with all of this, citizens seemingly bereft of any environmental protection, are being put at risk daily by having no recourse but to breathe air polluted by smoke from the NSWMA's landfill which mysteriously erupted in flames during the dispute between the authority and the co-operative. The stark effect is that thousands of citizens are exposed to the equivalent of being forced to smoke several harmful cigarettes a day.
Whatever is happening at the Riverton City landfill is as disgraceful as it is unacceptable. It is a hazard exposing hundreds of citizens to the risk from the deadly pall that hangs over sections of the city, of suffering serious harm from the smoke rising there.
This shouldn't be accepted like water having passed under a bridge. All efforts should be made to put out those dangerous fires.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
