SWMCOL to clean toxic water

Chief executive officer at SWMCOL Ronald Roach said while leachate treatment could be done using mechanised methods, it was costly. He said to use this method to treat the current problem would cost $21 million.

However, by using an environmental method, it would cost $1 million.

The project will come on stream by the end of March.

“What we have done is implement a pilot project using an engineered wetlands approach, so we are essentially using plants that would absorb the toxic components of the leachate. It will be a trickle system where the leachate will flow through different containers and as it flows through, the plants would absorb so at the end of the process, the water that comes out will meet the drinking water standard “It’s a lower cost programme, but because it’s biological we have to do testing to see what is the efficacy of the treatment process. It is a matter of how many plants would treat what amount of leachate given the parameters that need to be treated,” Roach said.

Public Utilities Minister Fitzgerald Hinds said what SWMCOL has done was, given the fact that Guanapo was a hilly area, create pools around the leachate which would trickle down into them.

He said the only way to treat leachate was to establish a leachate treatment plant which would make it clean from toxic substances including lead and cadium.

The minister noted the Guanapo Landfill was downstream of the Water and Sewerage Authority’s (WASA) water treatment plant.

“This fear that we are dealing with now has to do with the proximity of our water treatment plant to the landfill.

Because of the proximity and the tributary rivers, some people fear that the leachate is running into the water treatment plant. It is the other way around, so it never goes into the water treatment plant,” he said.

However, he noted, there were rivers that entered into the tributaries that went into the Guanapo River which in turn emptied into the Caroni River. This, he said, was dealt with at the Caroni Water Treatment Plant.

Hinds said the University of the West Indies’ study showed leachate was causing that problem hence the pilot project was under way, which was an environmental way of dealing with the leachate.

“The people have been sensitised since 2014 so it is no secret.

They were told they could bathe in the river, but do not drink the water,” he said.

The WASA report stated: “The high concentrations recorded in the raw river samples are in no way a reflection of the quality of WASA’s potable water supply. WASA uses a rigorous treatment process in which heavy metal contaminants, including lead and cadmium and mercury are easily removed from the water during the coagulation, floculation and sedimentation processes.

There is disinfection to eliminate dangerous pathogens. The water supplied by the authority for all of its treatment plants, including Guanapo and Caroni, is safe to drink.” “The public need have no fear of the water that they use coming from the taps produced by WASA, and that action is being taken to deal with this question of leachate in the pilot project,” Hinds sai