The Kpone engineered landfill site in Tema may not live up to its lifespan of 10 years considering the influx of high tonnage of refuse dumped on the site from Accra.
According to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA), Mr Isaac Ashai Odamtten, three out of the four cells that sieve toxic fluid known as leachate from the refuse and also produce biogas and manure when compacted were all full.
“The anticipation was to have a facility that could hold waste in Tema and its environs for about 10 years. Obviously what we are seeing now shows that we cannot meet the estimated time,” he said.
Mr Odamtten made this known when the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Alhaji Collins Dauda, and his deputy, Mr Emmanuel Kwadwo Agyekum, the Director of the Environmental and Sanitation Unit of the ministry, Mr Love Demedeme, and some officials of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) inspected some sanitation sites in Accra to assess the situation.
The sites included the Accra Sewerage Treatment Plant at Mudor, the Lavender Hill, and the Kpone Landfill site in Tema.
Kpong Treatment Plant
The $12.5 million dollars modern solid waste disposal facility, sponsored by the World Bank, was opened for use in 2013 to serve Tema and its environs.
The facility was supposed to receive 500 tonnes of waste daily. However, following the shutdown of the Achimota landfill site in Accra, waste managers resorted to dumping their waste materials at the Kpone site, thus increasing its capacity to about 2,000 tonnes daily.
The Kpone site is under the management of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) and Zoomlion. It receives refuse on a daily basis from private, domestic and industrial waste collectors.
Mr Odamtten called for the construction of more cells as a short-term measure to contain the situation. “We don’t have to wait till the facility is full because when that happens, there would be dire consequences,” he stated.
Mudor
At the Accra Sewerage Treatment Plant at Mudor, the Chief Executive Officer of AMA, Dr Alfred Okoe Vanderpuiye, explained that the assembly was taking measures to end the disposal of faecal matter into the sea.
As part of the measures, he said the assembly in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development was to secure a funding of 2.7 million euros from the Danish government to refurbish and expand the plant to make it operational after more than 15 years of dormancy.
According to him, after securing the funds, the facility would be completed in six months to serve the people of Accra and its environs with a decent, cost-effective and technologically tested faecal and sewerage treatment plant for the disposal of effluent and liquid waste.
Currently more than 100 septic tanks dump liquid waste into the sea. Checks by the Daily Graphic revealed that drivers paid between GH¢ 4 and GH¢ 9 to release faecal matter into the sea.
Ministry committed
Alhaji Dauda said one of the objectives of the Local Government Ministry was to embark on an aggressive sensitisation campaign to educate the people on the need to keep their surroundings clean at all times to ensure that, “We achieve zero incidence of cholera outbreak this year.”
Alhaji Dauda, however, appealed to other stakeholders to collaborate with his outfit to achieve that objective since the ministry could not do it alone.
<<Print>>