Stinky stench disturbing residents

• Source: Global Times
• [10:19 July 19 2010]
• Comments

In the far distance, a new waste facility is under construction. Expected to be complete by the end of the year, authorities say it will rid of the odors coming from the heaps of garbage covered by tarp, sitting at the Jimao waste landfill in Songjiang district. Photo: Liu Dong

By Liu Dong

As residents in Songjiang district complain a horrid stench wafting through their homes from a waste landfill in their backyard worsens in hot, sticky temperatures, local government officials insist that the situation is being managed to the best of their abilities.

Hundreds of residents in the western suburb posted appeals about their "unbearable living conditions" to local forums Sunday, including tianya.cn and KDS, in their latest attempt to draw attention to the issue.

The action follows a series of complaints filed to governments over the past four years, when residents first took to the issue, according to Zhang Guangying, a resident and member of the proprietor committee of the Haixin Town residential compound, situated a kilometer some north of the Jimao land dump, the largest garbage collection site in the district. He said that he and the other 5,000 residents in his compound are woken every night by the intense fumes.

"The situation has gotten more serious since the hot, humid weather started," he told the Global Times. "We close our windows in the winter, which helps shut out a lot of the stink.

"But now that it's summer, we've no choice but to leave our windows open because it gets too stuffy - and the sickening smell enters and really affects us."

Meanwhile, Fu Tingting, a resident and director of the proprietor committee of the Laidun Town residential compound, a kilometer or so west of the landfill, said that her group has called district authorities about the problem at least a hundred times over the years.

"They said they would take action to rid of the stinky smell, but we're still suffering from the fumes," the woman, who moved to the area from Jiangxi Province in 2007, told the Global Times. She added that the problem has affected thousands of residents in the area.

Problem 'under control'

But Huo Shi, deputy director of Songjiang District Afforestation and City Appearance and Environmental Sanitation Administration, said that governments are working hard at getting the land dump up to speed with the rapidly expanding area.

Since the land dump was created in 2001, more than 6 million yuan ($885,606) has been invested in the facility every year, he said. Local and municipal governments are additionally setting up a modern comprehensive waste treatment facility next to the current waste plot. He added that the 230 million-yuan ($33.95 million) project, still under construction, is expected to be complete by the end of this year.

According to Yu Fei, manager of Mei Shang International Group, the company in charge of the new facility, the new plant will be able to efficiently manage some 1,500 tons of waste daily.

"We'll use the latest biotechnologies to classify and degrade waste instead of simply continuing to dump waste in the landfill," Yu told the Global Times Sunday. "The major source of the stench is coming from decomposed liquid wastes, which the new facility will be able to better handle."