Photos illustrant un reportage sur la décharge de déchets toxiques en Haïti

Publié par siel sur 27 Avril 2011, 09:40am

And, BREAKING JOURNALISTIC NEWS , Georgianne has just published another very timely piece on the water crisis in Haiti entitled: Who Will Respond to Haiti's Cholera SOS?

My job on this assignment was primarily to take pictures,and this is what I did, as you will discover below. Someone please see that President-elect Martelly gets to see them, if he hasn't reviewed similar ones already. The first and foremost thing a government should do is to procure and ensure the nation's health. You can't rebuild anything if the foundations are laid in toxic waste water.

Mon travail était d'abord de prendre des photos, ce que j'ai fait et que vous pouvez découvrir ci-après.

Que quelqu'un, SVP, montre ces photos au président élu Martelly, s'il n'a pas eu l'occasion d'en voir auparavant des similaires.

La première chose que devrait faire un gouvernement est de procurer et d'assurer la santé de la nation.

Il n'est pas possible de reconstruire quoi que ce soit si les fondations se trouvent dans des eaux de déchets toxiques.

Touring the Truttier Waste Dump:

- by Mac McKinney
We have stopped on the edge of Truttier as a JEDCO Sewage Waste disposal truck passes by, kicking up dust from the dirt roads everywhere.

- by Mac McKinney
Shanty towns and jerry-rigged tents lurk in the shadows, often half-hidden by garbage and debris, but they run all the way up to the edge of the waste dump.

- by Mac
Heavy machinery used in the dump sits in the background, temporarily parked, while a goat meanders by in the foreground.

- by Mac
In fact goats, which will eat practically anything, are all over the dump and its outskirts. Wooden protective "A-Frames" have been secured to their necks to keep them from sticking their necks and bodies through fences and such.

- by Mac
Closeup of some goats with A-Frame collars.

- by Mac
Meanwhile, impoverished men are scavenging for anything worth using or selling on the blackmarket. They often have no protective gear other than what they can procure in a dump riddled with toxins and often inundated with foul air.

- by Mac
Closeup of scavengers

- by Mac
This is the medical waste dump area of the site.

- by Mac
Georgianne takes a shot to my left as both of us take photos of this medical wasteland, with syringes, needles and vomit bags strewn all over the place.

- by Mac
Meanwhile, behind me, beyond the medical site, a Caterpillar backhoe is burying garbage.

- by Mac
Closeup of the Caterpillar

- by Mac
In the far distance of the dump, you can see smoke from mounds of burning refuse wafting into the air, while smoke fans out with the winds.

- by Mac
Bulldozers and workers barely discernible in the clouds of smoke

- by Mac
Now we are trying to get past a guard shack to investigate the sewage holding pool or "pond". The worker in the orange safety vest tries giving us a hard time, but we had already had a tortured telephone conversation with the powers-that-be to finally procure passage anywhere in the dump.

- by Mac
Up ahead, sewage disposal trucks are discharging their toxic loads.

- by Mac
Embarrassingly, this includes the Haitian Red-Cross,

- by Mac
and a joint Red-Cross/Red-Crescent truck, and others, such as JEDCO, embarrassing because these life-saving NGOs and even the businesses know that their sewage may very well pollute populated areas down the line. But they will tell you that there is nowhere else they can dump their toxic cargoes in the area, and they may be right. But what are THEY doing to resolve this problem?

- by Mac
Closeup of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Truck

- by Mac
Georgianne, with Andre right behind her, takes some investigative shots as truck-drivers look on.

- by Mac
Raw sewage gushing out into the holding pond.

- by Mac
A portion of the pond, as heavy equipment digs the future holding pool in the far background.

- by Mac
Four trucks in a row discharging their toxic contents, some of the sewage atomizing and drifting down on everybody

- by Mac
Zooming in on the far end of the pond

- by Mac
More of a landscape view of the pond, or should I say swamp?

- by Mac
Meanwhile a dump truck full of excavated mud is rounding the bend,

- by Mac
and disappearing in a haze of dust.

- by Mac
We have driven to another part of the dump now as I zoom in on a couple of scavengers working in the smoke.

- by Mac
A cow is scavenging amidst the smoke and debris.

- by Mac
An ill-protected individual in shorts, maybe a kid, wonders through this scene out of Dante's Inferno.

- by Mac
Speaking of the devil, three goats scavenging

- by Mac
A bulldozer in the haze

- by Mac
A shanty town on the very edge of the dump as a man in silhouette walks past a mound of plastic

- by Mac
Closeup of shanties

- by Mac
Another shack

- by Mac
Men and children working and living amid the rubble

- by Mac
We watch scavengers leaving the facility with their bags filled, or half-filled, with what they hope they can sell or barter with. We weren't far behind at this point, heading back for fresher air and a cleaner environment ourselves.

*********
About this series:

On February 4th independent journalist Georgianne Nienaber and I flew into Haiti for a five day whirlwind investigative tour facilitated by our driver and "fixer", Andre Paultre, a journalist's best friend in Haiti. This is the eigth piece in my series, "Haitian Winter".

For Part One of this series, CLICK HERE
For Part Two of this series, CLICK HERE
For Part Three of this series, CLICK HERE
For Part Four of this series, CLICK HERE
For Part Five of this series, CLICK HERE
For Part Six of this series, CLICK HERE
For Part Seven of this series, CLICK HERE

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Photos illustrant un reportage sur la décharge de déchets toxiques en Haïti

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