Canadian bauxite company, Alcan, has completed plans for the rehabilitation of its former waste landfill lake at Mount Rosser, St. Catherine.

Used until 1991 for waste from Alcan's plant at Ewarton, the lake is the last remaining unsealed 'wet pond' bauxite landfill site in Jamaica.

The project, which has been approved by Government, will begin with the pumping out of the lake and ditches to channel away rain water. The lake contains 1.5 million cubic metres of water. Alcan expects this work to take between one and two years to complete.

The waste is then to be cleaned up and the land regraded to make it free draining. It will then be planted with trees and returned to government ownership.

"This is fantastic for the environment, because this pond is old - from the 1950s and done in the days when we didn't under-stand the hydro-geology of our country," said Dr. Parris Lyew-Ayee, general manager of the Jamaica Bauxite Institute, which oversaw the rehabilitation plans.

The landfill is one of several sites that the company retained ownership and responsibility for rehabilitating after selling its Jamaican operations to Glencore, now Windalco, in 2001. Under this agreement, Alcan was made responsible for rehabilitating and returning the sites to government.

In the 1980s, Jamaica changed from wet ponds to 'dry stacking' by which bauxite waste is sealed underground and kept in mud consistency.

Public meeting

Alcan will be holding a public meeting on the rehabili-tation of its landfill lake at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, December 11, at the Mount Rosser Primary and Junior High School.

ross.sheil@gleanerjm.com