Nearly three years after a fire shut down the Pockwood Pond incinerator, the Virginia company hired to supply replacement parts still has not delivered most of them, and the government is seeking a new firm to help decide the way forward, officials said.
Meanwhile, no end is in sight for the long-delayed repairs.
“I [would] like to give an expected date for the incinerator to be up and running again, but this will depend on expert advice received from a proven incinerator manufacturer we hope to engage sometime next week,” Waste Management Director Marcus Solomon told the Beacon Monday.
To find the new company, the Department of Waste Management requested expressions of interest on Nov. 7, seeking suppliers from the incineration industry to provide “expert advice” on how to repair the facility, Mr. Solomon said.
“We have reached [a point] where we felt it’s important that we get another player to assess, really and truly, the state of that incinerator,” Mr. Solomon explained. “We are proud to see many persons who have inquired are coming from international companies from [the United States] to Latin America; Europe to even the Caribbean. What we are really asking them to do is advise us.”
Mr. Solomon, who was appointed to his post in July 2023, said the move is part of efforts to urgently address longstanding issues at Pockwood Pond, where trash buried in the mountainside dumpsite behind the defunct incinerator frequently catches fire and sends noxious smoke over Tortola’s western end.
“The [chosen company] will first tell us to what extent the incinerator can be repaired, and, if so, where are the options available to us to repair [it] in the shortest possible time,” Mr. Solomon said.
Negotiations
The government’s plan to seek new advice follows years of negotiations with the Virginia company Consutech Systems LLC, which manufactured the incinerator and has supplied replacement parts after previous fires.
Soon after the latest blaze knocked the plant offline in February 2022, government ordered new replacement parts, and in May 2022 then-health and social development minister Marlon Penn said he expected them to arrive in time for repairs to be complete by the end of that year.
That didn’t happen.
All told, the government contracted Consutech to manufacture a new control panel, a replacement ash conveyor and quench tank, a heat exchanger, and three transfer arms.
Since then, only the contract for the transfer arms has closed following their delivery to Pockwood Pond on Oct. 23, 2023, according to Mr. Solomon.
Asked how much government has already paid Consutech, he directed the inquiry to the Ministry of Health and Social Development.
But neither the ministry nor HSD Minister Vincent Wheatley provided the figures before Beacon press time yesterday afternoon, and Consutech did not respond to messages.
Three tasks
Stuck between Consutech and a growing mountain of trash, the DWM is now seeking alternatives through its recent request for expressions of interest.
The chosen company’s tasks will be three-fold, Mr. Solomon said: preparing a diagnostic report on the incinerator; preparing a parts logistics plan with supplier information for acquiring the needed parts; and preparing an “outline rehabilitation plan” with a schedule that includes testing and commissioning the plant.
Meanwhile, Mr. Solomon said, his department will continue communicating with Consutech in hopes of securing the delivery of parts which have already been manufactured.
“[Consutech] provided photographic evidence to suggest that the control panel is completed, but … for me to sign off on anything saying ‘completed,’ I must be satisfied that the necessary assessments are done,” he told the Beacon.
He added that the government hasn’t ended its relationship with Consutech.
“I don’t like to say [anything] is over,” the director said. “I intend to manage the contracts [and] ensure that we get value for money and that we do get the things that we have asked for and paid for, and we implement a regiment that speaks to our appropriate administration of those contracts.”
Outsourced
Consutech, meanwhile, has blamed the delays largely on its suppliers, Mr. Solomon told the Beacon earlier this year.
“We have written [Consutech about] getting updates,” Mr. Solomon said in August. “So a written warning was sent, and [Consutech] communicated that they were having challenges with one of their suppliers and that they had outsourced the heat exchanger.”
Mr. Solomon also said at the time that he’d asked Consutech for an update from the third-party supplier responsible for the heat exchanger.
That request also warned Consutech of the VI’s “next steps” if further information wasn’t forthcoming, he said at the time.
Last month, Mr. Solomon elaborated on what those “steps” might look like.
“There may be areas that either party may need to improve on the contract,” Mr. Solomon said. “There is a process that we employed. And all steps will be employed in keeping with what the contract says ought to be done, if indeed there are areas that need to be corrected by either party.”
Asked for the identity of the third-party supplier, Mr. Solomon said that Consutech had not shared that information.
‘Next steps’
Even amid the delays, the director said the DWM had planned for such issues.
“Despite the numerous challenges, the [DWM] ensured there were appropriate accounting [measures] for our approaches on this matter,” he wrote in a message to the Beacon. “At this time, the [DWM] continues to monitor, evaluate and advise on the state of the incinerator and is hopeful the tender we issue can attract reputable/proven waste incinerator manufacturers/suppliers of parts who can further diagnose our plant and offer a sustainable and cost-effective way forward in the shortest possible time.”
The recent delays, however, are not Consutech’s first.
In 2015, government signed a roughly $1 million contract with the company to manufacture a pollution control scrubber, and it has already paid out at least $500,000 for that equipment, government officials have said.
But the scrubber has not yet arrived, and Mr. Solomon has told the Beacon that repairing the incinerator is currently a higher priority.
Fireproofing
While government awaits the replacement parts and further guidance on the repairs, other issues remain unresolved as well.
The blue corrugated metal building housing the incinerator needs to be rebuilt, and a series of fireproofing measures are needed inside and out, according to Mr. Solomon.
“In the beginning of the year, [the DWM asked] the fire service to do a fire assessment of [the incinerator] building in terms of mitigating any fire or attending to any fire that may occur,” Mr. Solomon told the Beacon.
Fire officers have since visited Pockwood Pond but are still processing their report, according to Chief Fire Officer Zebalon McLean.
A tender will be issued for a new building after the DWM receives the risk assessment, Mr. Solomon said.
Missed deadlines
Since the fire in February 2022, leaders have repeatedly pushed back target dates for recommissioning the incinerator.
Weeks after the blaze, then-health and social developmentminister Carvin Malone said thefacility would be repaired withintwo to four months.
In March 2022, two to four months became six.
Then, during a May 2022 House of Assembly meeting, Mr. Malone’s successor, Mr. Penn, said he expected the incinerator to be repaired by the end of 2022.
More than a year later, Mr. Solomon predicted in September 2023 that the facility would be up and running by the end of last December.
The February 2022 shut down wasn’t the first in recent years either. In November 2018, a fire damaged the facility and left it non-functional for more than a year.
In March 2021, a faulty water pump caused it to shut down for about six more weeks.
‘Embryonic’ stages
Overall, the VI’s current waste management system is still in its early stages, according to Mr. Solomon.
“Two ways we are treating waste is through landfilling and recycling,” he said last month. “And whilst recycling [is] good and we continue to push that, it’s still at its embryonic stages, its infant stages. So we need to find other treatment options.”
Though cleaner systems for trash disposal exist, a lack of available land limits such options across the Caribbean region, according to Mr. Solomon.
“There’s always going to be a review of what technology exists which can be employed for [DWM] to reduce the usage of land as a medium of treating waste,” he said. “One of those is, of course, waste incineration, and that’s why we [requested expressions of interest].”
Expressions of interest
Moving forward, the DWM is willing to work with incinerator manufacturers, parts suppliers and technicians to assess the Pockwood Pond facility, according to the request for expressions of interest.
The deadline for companies to respond was 4 p.m. on Friday.
