Will landfill smell go away? Let’s see if plans work...

expected rotting waste smell annoyed my nostrils, which is signature to most landfills I’ve been to, so I knew there was no way around it.

The smell at the business entrance wasn’t bad, but it intensified as Enviroserv’s group operations director, Nico Vermeulen, showed me around the section known as “Valley 2” – reportedly the source of the infamous emissions that have most residents wanting the site shut down.

There were about a dozen men at work, some mixing soil with cement and lime, which is then mixed with contaminated stormwater and put back into the site in a process called micro-encapsulation, basically solidifying liquids.

This, hopefully, will kill two birds with one stone – by reducing the high volume of contaminated stormwater the ethekwini Municipality has refused to discharge via its wastewater works plant at Cuttings Beach, and help increase the ph levels, the decrease of which allegedly led to the current smell of the site.

Vermeulen assured me that there was no leachate being put back on to the site because of the Durban High Court order granted to the Upper Highway Air activist group in April.

I did not see any waste being accepted, treated or disposed of.

The remedial and mitigation work is progressing well and there is a two-month wait to see if the objectives of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Enviroserv have been achieved.

On Wednesday, when the parliamentary portfolio committee on environmental affairs visited the site, the smell also hovered throughout our time there. People respond differently to it, but its harshness hits your nostrils and throat, even if you’ve been exposed to it numerous times.

Chief executive Dean Thompson and group technical director Esme Gombault showed the group around, including the almost full contaminated stormwater dam at the bottom of Valley 2.

On its right is the capped Valley 1 which has different types of vegetation growing on it. A whirlybird is used to monitor the emissions although it is no longer operational. Whirlybirds and air quality monitors have been installed in different sections as part of the ongoing remedial action.

Valley 2 has about six years of life left, but its front is being capped using imported specially-designed plastic and soil.

Will the smell vanish once all the plans Enviroserv promised to implement have been completed?

I don’t know, but I hope it does otherwise the clashes between Enviroserv and the community will never end.