92522 Kyoto-Style Waste Management in Liepaja April 29, 2004 The hill embraced by forests on all sides is split into two by a temporary road - a trail left by lorries. On one side there is an endless row of discharged waste stacks with croaking sea gulls soaring above. On the other side the hill is only gently sloping and its surface is relatively smooth. Here and there gray clay is protruding from beneath the soft fresh snow – this is an unmistakable sign of recultivation. There is no need to hold your breath either, as unbearable stink a couple of meters away from here is quite moderate and bearable at this spot. The dump at Skede will be closed in August of the current year, with waste stacks on the other side of the temporary road hidden under a clay cover and lush grass in summer seasons. Together with the Skede dump, 26 other dumps will disappear from the Liepaja Region. They will be replaced by a single waste management facility – the Grobina landfill, which is already in the making in the concrete-covered territory of the former soviet military training and testing ground. The Solid Waste Management Project financed by the World Bank and implemented in the Liepaja Region is a part of the plan aiming at reducing the number of currently countless dumps, both legal and illegal, to 10-12 technologically well-provided regional solid waste management sites. So far, there have been around 500 dumps in Latvia. In line with the Solid Waste Management project, there is a hope that woods, meadows, lakes and groundwater will recover, and people residing in the vicinity of the Skede dump or coming here for the season will stop complaining about unbearable stink. Skede is situated in a beautiful and highly favored location about one kilometer away from the Baltic Sea and near Lake Tosmare, which stretches in the area of natural reserve, rich in rare plants. Waste has been discharged here since 1960. The dump is full to its capacity, and the waste mountain rises 15 meters high. Waste is dumped straight on permeable soil and sand. Groundwater from the dump flows in the direction of Lake Tosmare, which is being polluted with infiltrate generated by waste. The situation in the Liepaja Region can be compared to an apartment with each room in it having a pile of waste of its own. There have been waste disposal sites in each municipal administrative territory; they have been in forests, bogs, and gravel and sand pits. Standards of environmental protection have been ignored with drainage ditches or collection of wastewater missing. By 2006, this unsanitary chaos will have been replaced with a nature-friendly solid waste management system. A facility for collection of biogas will be built at the Grobina landfill. Infiltrate from waste will not impair nature because sludge-covered bio cells (with sludge coming from another World Bank financed project) will be used. So far, there has been no such precedent in Latvia. At Skede, a gas collection station will operate where gas generated by rotting waste through a specially built collection system will be channeled to a generator producing electricity. One of the greatest achievements of the project is the establishment of Liepaja RAS, which is a waste management company for the Liepaja Region. So far, the city of Liepaja had not had a regional institution responsible for waste management. "We have observed that already now less waste is discharged in forests," notes Sandra Dejus, a member of the World Bank and SIA Liepajas Udens project unit. "Since waste collection has become a common system, it is convenient to leave waste outside on collection days. Some house owners even give keys from houses to waste collectors." Solid waste management project has been an excellent lesson in business management due to a large number of parties involved in it, among them also the European Union allocating ISPA financing. Ritma Dubrovska, a member of the World Bank and SIA Liepajas Udens project unit, remarks that despite the incurred problems the project documentation was prepared independently and without the assistance from foreign consultants. "Terms and conditions for ISPA financing are very complicated, and we had to reach agreements with all local governments on their co-financing at the time when they had to finance other urgent projects," she notes. If the Liepaja Environment Project, which is also financed by the World Bank, is international, this one is unique. Under it, Latvia for the first time operates under the framework of the Koyoto Protocol and cooperates with the Prototype Carbon Fund founded by the World Bank. Under the Kyoto Protocol, carbon quotas can be traded, and as Latvia does not use its quota in full, it can "sell" a part to another country via the Prototype Carbon Fund. "On the basis of Liepaja's practice the Prototype Carbon Fund is developing other similar projects," says Gunars Ansins, Director of the Development Department of the Liepaja City Council. As a result the range of people benefiting from the project is expanded.