While the present waste-dumping site of Louis Trichardt is brimming over, the process of establishing a new dump site has been drawn out.

The Democratic Alliance stated this week that they remained concerned “since the process was supposed to have been finalised at least two years ago as the dumping site is tremendously over its prescribed level of capacity.”

“They may only dump waste up to a level of 1.5 meter above the normal ground level, but in some places the waste has reached a level of about 6 meters,” said a tired taxpayer, who resides near the present site situated on the Vondeling road.

“Yet another major health risk to the town,” Mr Herman Smith of the Soutpansberg Ratepayers Association said.

DA Cllr Brian du Plooy said that a meeting had been held in January between himself, MP Desiree van der Walt (provincial DA leader) and officials of the Limpopo Department of Environmental Affairs.

“They have acknowledged that the Makhado Municipality are at fault and that they are in the process of finalising the issuing of the license for the new facility.”

Du Plooy said that the provincial department had undertaken to provide the DA with a detailed report by the end of January but have failed to do so.

“The Democratic Alliance will be asking parliamentary questions to the Ministers of Corporate Governance and Water and Environmental Affairs for their immediate intervention,” Du Plooy said.

The spokesperson of Makhado Municipality, Mr Louis Bobodi, confirmed on Monday that the municipality had applied for a new waste management facility.

“We submitted the Environmental Impact Analysis that was conducted and are waiting for the response of the Department of Environmental Affairs. We applied some time ago, two years or one year back,” Bobodi said.

The information of the SRPA was somewhat more specific. They said that they had been invited to a meeting of the steering committee for the Makhado Waste Facility Project on December 7, 2007. A representative of Bazisa Technical Waste Solutions of Arcadia (Pretoria), a company responsible for environmental impact assessments, was present. The progress of the project and the challenges were on the agenda. The stringent conditions for a formal landfill site were mentioned. The strict regulations have as purpose to prevent water pollution.

“Public participation in waste management, as a whole, should be ongoing …” was said at the meeting.

“Since 2007, we have not received any feedback whether the new site conforms to all the legal and constitutional requirements. The community living in close proximity has a constitutional right to an environment that is not harmful to their health and wellbeing,” said Smith.

The new site for waste management has been identified.

“The site is located between the grazing paddocks and Tshikota location. It will be established as soon as the department gives us permission to do so,” Bobodi said.

The DA said that ineffectiveness of the Makhado Municipal Council caused the drawn out process.

“A new refuse area has been identified on the Vivo road, but the license that must be issued … has been dragging for a very long time. This is all due to the ineffective planning by incapable and unqualified personnel within the local Makhado Municipality. This would have been prevented if the Council had been effective in their IDP and budget processes,” the DA statement reads.

Once the new waste facility has been established, the important task of the rehabilitation of the present overly full dumping site should be undertaken in accordance with the prescribed laws.