Renew Bahamas President and CEO Gerhard Beukes said yesterday that the waste management company was proceeding as planned with routine operations at the New Providence landfill and plans for its materials recycling facility following the most recent fire at the site.
Beukes told Guardian Business that the landfill and its recycling facilities were operating following the suspected arson in the northern part of the landfill. He noted that the initial fires appeared to have started in straight lines in various parts of the northern side of the landfill, adding that Renew had found evidence of more attempted fires on the eastern side of the landfill.
"We're open and operating. We sent three more containers of recycling materials to the port [yesterday], so we're certainly not allowing this to slow us down.
"We'll be looking to have [a large materials recycling facility] completed by the end of March and put test loads through in April. That plan remains completely unchanged, so our biggest effort now is to ensure that we smother as much of the smoke as quickly as possible," said Beukes.
While he said that he could not comment on speculation, he added that the firm is looking into potential leads related to the blaze. He also dismissed speculation that the landfill had experienced a slowdown in operations prior to the fire.
"To us it was very clear that there was a concentrated effort to set everything alight yesterday and the night before," he said.
The fire stared on Saturday night and continued Sunday before being contained. However, Beukes urged everyone to manage their expectations regarding the heavy smoke still affecting the area.
"There is still going to be a lot of smoke coming up from [the landfill] over the next several days, maybe for the next seven to ten days unfortunately. We're putting as much water and fill material on it as possible. We've got our plant operators working very aggressively to cover as much of that as possible, but there will still be a lot of smoke," he said.
Renew Bahamas signed a contract with the government to manage the New Providence landfill last June, with responsibility for studying the site's waste inflows and constructing a recycling plant.
Beukes had previously told Guardian Business that the company had sent several waste shipments to China, India, and Taiwan and was positioned to have a profound environmental impact on the country in 2015.

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