An island littered with trash: How Maria highlighted Puerto Rico's poor waste management

Following Hurricane Maria's battering winds of up to 155 km/h, the stench of garbage and sight of enormous trash piles have added to the woes of communities recovering from the destructive storm in Puerto Rico. Some mountains of waste lingered for up to six months, posing serious environmental issues.

The Villas del Sol community is a neighborhood with a long history of marginalization and struggles to survive. It is located in northern Puerto Rico, in the town of Toa Baja, and it was not until about two weeks ago that government agencies went through the neighborhood and removed the accumulated waste of six months. There, among the streets littered with garbage, children played, residents passed early to go to their jobs and housewives looked from the window of their kitchens while preparing dinner for their families.

However, as in the Villas del Sol community, the problems of waste management on the island go back long before the hurricane passed through the Caribbean island.

Although there are state and federal protections that seek to ensure proper waste management, far from what is written are the actions and practices that are carried out on the island.

Since 2000, there is what is known as Law 411 of the year 2000, which projected that by the year 2006, 35 percent of the waste generated should be recycled.

However, according to ecologist and environmental scientist Alexis Molinares, only 10 percent of the waste generated on the island is "segmented."

"Before the passage of the hurricane, there was a high level of dissatisfaction both from the public and from the regulatory agencies themselves of the execution that was taking place in the management of the waste. In many cases what we have are open dumps: sites to throw waste openly without any regulation or technology," said Molinares.

In Puerto Rico, approximately 6.5 pounds of daily waste per person are produced. This is equivalent to 4 million tons per year.

On the other hand, as Molinares told AccuWeather, the use of landfills has turned out to be the easiest and most economical way to dispose of garbage in Puerto Rico, since the other ways of handling garbage represent certain challenges from the economic, technological and regulatory points of view.

Currently, there are 29 landfills in use in Puerto Rico, of which 13 have closure orders issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Waste management worsens with the passage of Hurricane María

According to Molinares, in a state of emergency like the one that happened after hurricanes Irma and María passed through the island, "many decisions were made on the run."

"There was a lot of public pressure and they looked for places that were thought to be short-term and temporary," Molinares said.

The current situation is that these so-called "temporary" dumps still exist six months after the hurricane.

In addition, like many of the landfills with closure orders, these collection centers produce leachates and do not comply with any environmental regulation as they are located in places prone to flooding. Leachates, or liquids that drain from landfills and are in contact with underground streams of drinking water, represent a serious environmental concern.

For example, the map below shows the close proximity of the main water resources and landfills located on the island.

Molinares said that poor waste management is among the top three environmental problems that Puerto Rico faces.

Accoring to Molinares, there's little hope to remedy the situation.

"We are no longer in time to pick up trash from 40 years ago by operating in the wrong place and install the technologies that would not have the impact of guaranteeing the health of the communities,” concluded Molinares.

Author's notes: This is the first part of a series of three reports on the issue of waste management in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. The next part, on Thursday, April 5, 2018, explores the government's positions in the face of a potential crisis of solid waste management on the island.

This story was translated from an original AccuWeather en Español series "Una isla entre basura"; watch a report in Spanish below:

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