Minister Taivini Teai visited the Nivee site, accompanied by Diren and the Fenua Ma team, to discuss development possibilities and the tools needed to treat waste. The site could become “a major waste treatment and recovery hub” in French Polynesia.
Benoit Layrle, the general manager of Fenua ma, has already mentioned several times the horizon of the end of life of the CET of Paihoro and the possibilities that exist to extend this date of 2035. The union has mentioned different hypotheses in its 2021 master plan: to develop Paihoro differently or to go to the east coast of Tahiti where the Country has protected a significant land reserve, Nivee. Located at PK21, on the border between Papenoo and Tiarei, the site already hosts a hospital waste incinerator and a toxic waste treatment and burial center, never put into operation. There also remain about a hundred hectares unexploited and far from any residential area.
It was at this site that the Minister of Agriculture, Marine Resources and Environment, Taivini Teai, was on Monday. Together with Diren and Fenua Ma, he began by visiting the banalizer and the incinerator operated by the hospital, facilities to which other tools could be added to treat waste at risk from biosecurity or the primary sector. “Current solutions are not entirely satisfactory since the companies responsible for processing this waste for customs, biosecurity services or other private and public bodies carry out their activity under conditions that deviate from the planning and environmental codes”it is stated in the press release. Nivee would be the ideal solution for the installation of these new tools because the site already hosts activities for the treatment of organic waste with infectious risks. The criteria relating to the prevention of technological risks are therefore already checked.
Other areas would be dedicated to receiving waste such as lithium batteries or distress flares, to the installation of an incinerator (if the country chooses this treatment solution). Nivee could ultimately become “a waste management complex”The government is awaiting the conclusions of Diren and Fenua Ma on the prospects for operating the site. The press release concludes on the importance of recycling, recovering or converting waste into fertilizer or energy and of course continuing to reduce the mass of waste to be buried.
