New Providence Ecology Park

Turning a burning dump into a managed landfill

The Harrold Road landfill receives most of the waste generated on New Providence, home to The Bahamas’ capital. Repeated landfill fires, including one in 2017 that burned for weeks and forced schools and residents to evacuate, had made it one of the country’s most pressing environmental and public health issues.

In 2019 the Government of The Bahamas selected the Providence Advisors / WRDG consortium to remediate and operate the site as the New Providence Ecology Park. SHA was retained as the operation’s engineering consultant for its first five years, with a scope covering 28 technical plans for operations, environmental protection and capital upgrades.

Put the fires out, then engineer the site for the long term

• Landfill fire control: located hot spots with infrared drone scans, carbon monoxide bar-hole testing and temperature probes, extinguished them, then regraded the entire landfill surface under a 300 mm soil cover. SHA also sourced a refurbished fire truck and suppression equipment and trained a local rapid-response fire team, which contained a major fire at a neighbouring scrap yard before it could reach the landfill.
• Operations engineering: prepared the site’s Design, Operations and Closure Plan, flew quarterly drone surveys for fill planning and airspace tracking, rebuilt the perimeter roads, specified the landfill equipment fleet and trained operators.
• Environmental monitoring: drilled 30 new shallow and deep monitoring wells and ran a monthly groundwater, surface water and air quality program, including odour and gas checks at 53 air monitoring stations.
• Leachate and stormwater: built a water balance and HELP model, designed tire-filled French drains, an equalization pond upgrade and a treatment wetland, and sized stormwater ponds for the 1-in-100-year storm.
• Site infrastructure: designed the refurbished scale facility and new entrance that separates waste haulers from visitors, a Residential Drop-Off, a construction and demolition waste sorting area, and an engineered cell and treatment pad for petroleum-contaminated soils.
• Closure and landfill gas: developed a progressive closure plan backed by settlement and slope stability analysis, showed that a geomembrane cap would cut leachate generation by more than 75%, and engineered the landfill gas collection and flaring system.

SHA also built a local team for the project, hiring Bahamian environmental engineering and survey professionals.

From national emergency to Ecology Park

Within the first year, exposed garbage at the site shrank from about 95 acres to 8 acres. Five years on, the New Providence Ecology Park reports that uncontrolled landfill fires have been eliminated, and an engineered gas system now captures methane from the landfill.

The project shows what SHA brings to landfill fires anywhere: rapid assessment, safe extinguishment, and the operating and engineering systems that keep fires from coming back.