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Published On: Mon, Oct 29th, 2018

A lot of hot air

Hilbert HaarBy Hilbert Haar

After Envirogreen it is now Enviropower to get a shot at building a waste-to-energy facility on Pond Island. The company recently made a presentation in the parliamentary committee for environment and infrastructure.

It’s an old song and people desperate for a solution to the situation at the dump have been hearing it like a broken record for years. So far it never added up to anything.

Former Vromi-minister Christophe Emmanuel declared with a lot of pomp in the past that he was two signatures away from a deal with the Canadian company Envirogreen but before he could get those signatures the government fell and his successor Miklos Giterson quickly declared that Envirogreen was out of the picture.

The pitch Enviropower made to the parliamentary committee shows how uncertain this government is about actually doing something meaningful with this issue. I mean, jeez, if you don’t know by know about the available technology, if you don’t know that Gebe is producing electricity at $0.22 while Enviropower is going to charge $0.25 for its clean energy – and that this is going to be a problem – you haven’t been on our island for long or you have been soundly asleep.

The main question for me is why the parliamentary committee is wasting time on such a presentation. Should the initiative not come from Minister Giterson? Why, with all his promises for a quick solution to the dump disaster, does the minister not come to parliament with a plan? Like, look, this is what I intend to do, here are the conditions, Gebe is on board and now we can move on with this crap?

All the parliament has to say is yes or no.

But instead, a small committee of parliament had its ears washed by people with incredibly long titles – like PiperJaffray Managing Director Project Financing Investment Banking George Longo. And what does it all add up to? Is the committee now taking this matter to the floor of parliament with a proposal?

I think that this is not even the task of our parliament. They are legislators; hiring a foreign company to build a waste-to-energy facility is an executive task.

So this committee meeting is just a lot of hot air. And Enviropower’s director Hulbert’s statement – as reported by the Daily Herald – that his waste-to-energy plan will be “cleaner than a diesel truck driving by your house” does not exactly put me at ease either, knowing how polluting diesel trucks can be.

Considering all this, I marvel at the impotence of the government and of a minister who has labeled the dump as a murdering giant – or words to that effect.

Remember my formula Minister Giterson: I + A = R. Intention plus Action is Result. And results never lie.