DLP vows to dump Greenland
Publication: Sun on Saturday
Paper Section And Page: 5
Paper Date: Sat, Sep 16, 2000
Byline: by Janelle Walters
THE CONTROVERSIAL Greenland Landfill will be scrapped if the Democratic Labour Party wins the next election.
And Opposition Leader David Thompson made it clear yesterday at a Press luncheon that "it certainly would never have got off the ground if the Democratic Labour Party was returned to office in 1994².
Stressing that Greenland had never been an option or priority, he said the project was "environmentally too risky², and that even from tours of the plant it had been found that the cell to be used to hold "the most dangerous forms of bacteria² was leaking.
"Alternative uses can be found for Greenland and when we look at what has happened at the other landfill and how that has been managed and the problems experienced there, we must look at the alternatives,² Thompson said.
One such alternative, he suggested, was an incinerator, noting that when this had been suggested years before, there was a belief that it was too expensive.
However, he said: "If the amount of money that we have been throwing down a hole at Greenland had been saved, and some additional resources added to it, we could probably have afforded an incinerator rather than the monumental wastage that has taken place at Greenland.²
The Opposition Leader also said he never envisioned that $400 million would have been accrued in just two years from the Value Added Tax; and charged that with so much money, Government could have altered the countryıs expenditure practices.
Instead, he said: "This Government took the money and blew it. It was blown in the lead-up to the last election through wild promises, blown with the National Housing Corporation and the Urban and Rural Development commissions.²
Thompson said they were only now coming back to earth, realising that they had "paid a lot and in return had gained little².