PHILIPSBURG – While the parliamentary committee for Public Housing, Urban Planning, Environment and Infrastructure (VROMI) debated last week the proposal for the construction of a waste-to-energy plant with the Canadian company Envirogreen Energy, the government is looking for a solution to waste management and the dump fires in a completely different direction – and it seems to be getting support from the Dutch Ministry of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations in the process.
The current Envirogreen-proposal deals exclusively with the construction of a waste-to-energy plant – one that will sell power to GEBE for just $0.18 per kilowatt – but it offers no solution for the problems St. Maarten is experiencing with persistent fires at the dump.
Here is an indication of what the government may have in mind: a visit on May 9 by Deputy Minister Plenipotentiary Michael Somersall to a dumpsite in Nieuwdorp. This site is being covered through a technology offered by Multriwell and equipped with gas-extraction equipment.
Multriwell’s commercial manager Ing. Eugѐne Timmermans, informed Prime Minister Leona Romeo-Marlin a few days before this visit of the solution his company has to offer. VROMI-Minister Giterson has been informed about the Multriwell-solution and about the visit of Michael Somersall to the dumpsite in Nieuwdorp. So far, all this has apparently escaped the attention of the members of the parliamentary VROMI-committee.
Multriwell is not into building waste-to-energy plants; the company is into solving problems caused by dumpsites like the one in Philipsburg where persistent fires have become an obvious health hazard to the population.
Ing. Timmermans made a presentation about his solution to Somersall and also to Hans van der Stelt, program director reconstruction at the Ministry of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations. In both cases, Timmermans assured his audience that his company is able to cover the dump on Pond Island within a period of twelve months and to install gas-extraction equipment. This equipment would use the methane from the dump to produce electricity – initially around 5 megawatt and later as much as 10 megawatt – for a period of ten to twelve years.
Covering the dump, setting up the gas-extraction equipment and turning the dump into a park would cost, according to Multriwell, at most €40 million ($44.8 million at the current rate of exchange, or 80.2 million guilders).
Multriwell also made a presentation to Finance Minister Perry Geerlings, back in January at the Infratech Exchange in Rotterdam.
The solution Multriwell offers, and is now seriously considered by the government, has a proven track record. According to Ing. Timmermans his company completed a similar project in Russia within three months. Multriwell’s Trisoplast covering technology has been used by dump sites in the Netherlands for fifteen years. The material has a life expectancy of at least one hundred years. According to Multriwell, applying Trisoplast goes four times faster than alternative covering methods.
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