Kabua clears doubt on rubbish

Marshall Islands

IN what is seen as trying to put the record straight, Marshall Islands Pres ident Amata Kabua said his govern ment has not accepted any deal to offer a dumpsite for American rubbish. “No thing has been done yet,” Kabua said June 28 in Suva. “If it is something that will destroy our ecology then we’ll not accept it.”

Admiralty Pacific, a United States company, has offered to pay a fee of nearly US$56 million for the right to dump United States domestic rubbish in the Marshalls. The offer has attracted a lot of criticisms from home and abroad.

But Kabua maintains that while the offer has been made his government will not enter into negotiation with Admiralty Pacific unless favourable results are re ceived from feasibility studies.

“They say this is non-toxic domestic garbage but like any other nation when someone talks about bringing garbage to your backyard you feel bad,” Kabua said.

“Garbage is not a very interesting thing.”

Those strongly behind the scheme are the people of Ebeye on the Kwajalein Atoll. The island, about three miles from

the United States missile base, is one of the most over-populated communities in the world. At least 10,000 Marshallese workers live in crowded conditions on the tiny coral island. They see the dump ing of rubbish on their reef as one possi bility of enlarging and linking the chain of islands on the atoll. Representatives from Ebeye have had talks with the gov ernment and Admiralty Pacific. But the government was not budging.

Says Kabua: “We told Admiralty to go back and do the feasibility study for it, give us a plan showing how the garbage will be placed and show what effect it will have on our eco-system. We told them to take their proposal to the Un ited States EPA (Environmental Protec tion Agency) and see if they’ll approve the scheme. If they do approve it then they can come back to us because we also have our own EPA people. We’ll prob ably bring some of the experts in New Zealand to look this thing up. If it’s not toxic and safe then we’ll accept it be cause it can be a good thing to built land with. But nothing has been done yet. I think it’ll take about a year to do the

study.”

Admiralty Pacific tried to get the Mar shall Islands government to pay for the feasibility study. “I said no, that’s your proposition you fund it yourself, take to your own affairs in the United States and you come and see us,” says Kabua.

“This company has not done its home work yet.” Asked why the Americans are so eager to ship their rubbish miles offshore, Kabua said: “It’s cheaper than taking it by truck to an inland dump.”

He said it is twice as expensive to dump the rubbish in the U.S.

On Marshall Islands joining SPARTE CA, the South Pacific Regional Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement which gives preferential trade access into Australia and New Zealand for island countries, Kabua said it did not mean much if trade was not available. He said countries like the Marshalls which lacked an export industry could not utilise SPARTECA. He believed that for SPAR TECA to be beneficial New Zealand and Australia should extend industrial aid to help set up small export industries in the smaller island countries. □