Haiti Seeks Home For A Sea Of Debris

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Haiti Seeks Home For A Sea Of Debris

by Carrie Kahn

Enlarge Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images Workers remove rubble from a destroyed school in Port-Au-Prince in early March. Haitians now must find a way to dispose of the estimated 25 million cubic yards of debris left in the wake of the powerful earthquake that struck the country in January.

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March 25, 2010

One of the biggest and most urgent problems facing Haiti is what to do with the tons and tons of rubble from fallen homes, offices and other buildings left after the massive January earthquake.

Haiti will have to contend with an estimated 25 million cubic yards of debris. In comparison, New York City had 1 million cubic yards of waste to deal with after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Haitian government is still struggling to find safe sites to dump all the debris, even as more structures are slated for demolition.
Haitian President Rene Preval likes to say it will take a thousand dump trucks a thousand days to get all the debris off the streets of Port-au-Prince, the country's capital.

Gary Marcel, one of those enlisted in that Herculean task, says he fills his truck with debris from the devastated downtown streets six to seven times a day. Then, he queues up with dozens of other trucks dumping their loads at Terminal Varreux, a private port on the bay of Port-au-Prince.

Since the quake hit more than two months ago, all the dumping has added nearly 30 yards to the length of the port's jetty.

It's been difficult to find suitable sites to put all the debris. The densely populated capital has little open space, and driving to locations far outside Port-au-Prince wouldn't be very efficient.

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Much more at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125170774&ft=1&f=1004

 

[Sally Furniss]

Re: Haiti Seeks Home For A Sea Of Debris

Managing The Debris


There is an environmentally sound way to [remove the rubble], and that's the way that we're going to do it. It's going to take us a little while to get that in place ? and so that it's done the right way ? but we are confident that we'll be able to make it work.

- Mike Byrne of the U.S. Agency for International Development



So in the meantime, dumping at the water's edge and in the nearby marshlands has been going on with little oversight and few questions asked.

Mike Byrne, who works for the U.S. Agency for International Development, says concerns about dumping at the port are now being addressed. "There is an environmentally sound way to do that, and that's the way that we're going to do it. It's going to take us a little while to get that in place ? and so that it's done the right way ? but we are confident that we'll be able to make it work," Byrne says.

In fact, USAID just signed a $3.5 million contract with a South Florida firm to manage the debris site.

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