By Martin Hellicar
INTERIOR Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou yesterday announced immediate measures to clean up the Kotsiatis landfill site.
Christodoulou and Nicosia Mayor Lellos Demetriades visited the massive dump — which receives the household waste of all of Nicosia and 28 villages in the district — yesterday morning. Residents of nearby Kotsiatis are up in arms over what they say is the sorry state of the site. Villagers point to trash being dumped willy-nilly on the perimeter of the landfill and say rubbish is not properly covered over with earth.
The Minister and the Mayor were evidently not too impressed with what they saw yesterday.
They concurred that the main problem was individuals dumping trash both within and around the site outside normal operating hours, with the result that rubbish was left exposed or was not promptly covered with earth.
As an immediate remedy, Christodoulou said he would instruct police to patrol the dump on a 24-hour basis to prevent illegal dumping. He added that the perimeter fence would be reinforced to stop people adding to the dump’s load outside normal operating hours.
The Minister also announced that the government would foot the bill for a general clear-up of the area surrounding the landfill. He also promised earthing-over procedures would be improved.
But Christodoulou also spoke of long-term trash disposal solutions. He said the government had commissioned a team of foreign experts to draw up a comprehensive trash management plan for the whole island.
He said his Ministry’s recommendations for action, based on the experts’ findings, would be ready for submission to the cabinet “in the next few weeks.”
Last week, the House Environment committee was promised by Interior Ministry representatives that the trash management plan would be ready to go before the cabinet “in the next few days.”
The Minister said the plan would cover both siting for disposal sites and recycling schemes.
Cyprus has a huge and growing trash management problem.
The island is third in the EU league table of per capita rubbish production. The average Cypriot generates 465 kilos of trash a year. Add to this the considerable trash contribution made by tourists, and the island produces some 380,000 tonnes of solid waste a year. The committee heard from government experts that this volume was expected to reach 500,000 tonnes a year by 2007.
The Agriculture Ministry environment service says this rubbish more often than not ends up in unsuitable, uncontrolled, dumps. The situation is described as “out of control.”
