According to councilman Omar Cevallos, Emgirs is opening small holes in old buckets because the last one has collapsed. In addition, the Inga landfill would be about to complete its useful life without a new waste management project.
In Quito, more than 2,200 tons of garbage that occur daily. The waste continues to arrive at the Inga landfill, even though there is no more space. This is how councilor Omar Cevallos details it, who affirms that bucket 10, delivered in May 2021, it has already completed its useful life. This was the last bucket to be built and, according to Cevallos, it has not been specified if a bucket 11 will be built.
“I have asked the manager of Emgirs (Maricruz Hernández) to come so that she can explain to us how the situation is. landfill situation. In my opinion, bucket 10 has already been completed,” says the Councilman.
THE TIME has requested, since January 24, 2022, an interview with the manager of Emgirs, who has been with the company in charge of waste management for about two months, but there has been no response. In addition, for two years access to the information of this Company has been restricted.
From its communication department it was detailed, on March 8, 2022, that statements cannot be given because pthey repair a report to present it in the Metropolitan Council. When? It is not known, since it is the responsibility of the mayor, Santiago Guarderas, summon her. Meanwhile, what happens to the capital’s waste is a reserved secret by Emgirs.
The ‘zombie’ buckets
If the last bucket of landfill in Quito is already full, where is the garbage being deposited? «Now they are opening cells or spaces in the previous buckets to deposit the garbage there,” says Cevallos, who has followed up on waste management for more than a year.
Vinicio Beltrán, an environmental engineer, says that it is irresponsible to have buckets ‘zombies’ that is to say, that they have already completed their useful life, but that refuse. “They are ‘alive’ again but they are toxic,” she exemplifies.
And it is that the consequence of this action of putting garbage in cells has a direct impact on the leachate management (liquids that are formed from garbage and are toxic). “If spaces are opened between buckets, the leachates filter into the hydrographic basins,” says Beltrán. Cevallos complements this idea by detailing that a bucket must be structured with channels so that the leachates go to the treatment pools.
“If they are opening cells, it will be necessary to see how they manage the leachates«, questions Cevallos.
Bucket with observations
Bucket 10 was built in partnership between Emgirs and the Metropolitan Public Company for Mobility and Public Works (Epmmop).
Cevallos, in conversation with this medium, says that on Friday, March 4, 2022, a reading was given draft report of the Comptroller General of the State in which, according to the Councilman, it was determined that the cubeto 10 does not have an adequate technical compaction of the soilwhich generates the leachate filtration. “Also in the upper part of bucket 10, everything that was planned to be built was stopped by 35%,” says Cevallos, who in 2021 said that Epmmop was not suitable to build this space.
This, however, is not the only observation made to Emgirs. In January 2022, the Comptroller determined failures in the management of sanitary waste hazardous (hospital waste). The Comptroller’s Office determined that for three years (between the mayor’s offices of Mauricio Rodas and Jorge Yunda) materials classified as infectious: gauze, syringes, gloves did not receive adequate treatment.
The comments to Emgirs are evident, although past managers like Hernán Alvarado tried to position that everything was fine. While the former manager Gabriela Dávila had indicated that technical decisions were never made.
Currently, the Prosecutor’s Office is investigating whether the metropolitan company committed an environmental crime. And the Ministry of the Environment fined the entity in January 2022, with $127,500 per serious offenses against the environment.
Quito with a filling about to ‘die’
The Inga landfill started to operate in 2003 with a repower. Between 2018 and 2019 it was indicated, since past administrations, that it could be extended until 2022although an exact time was never determined.
Cevallos maintains that he has not been socialized a plan for when the landfill reaches its useful life. He says that there is talk of the construction of other stuffingalthough it is not known where would it be located. (AVV)
“Bucket 10 (of the sanitary landfill) seems to have been completed and spaces are being opened to deposit garbage there.” Omar Cevallos, councilman of Quito.
El mal tratamiento de la basura afecta al aire ya que los lixiviados provocan gases de metano inflamable e incluso asfixia.
