ENVIRONMENT-CUBA:
Sugar Mill Poses Explosive Risk
Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, (IPS) - One of the main industrial sugar refining complexes in the province of Matanzas, in the west of Cuba, has been blamed for an underground build-up of methane gas and other violations of environmental law that are putting thousands of families in the area at risk.

The case came to light after it was reported in an extensive article in the daily newspaper Juventud Rebelde - the press in Cuba is a government monopoly - which included the testimonies of many residents and experts, who confirm the threat posed by the pollution caused by the Jesús Rabí agroindustrial complex in Calimete, a municipality in Matanzas with a population of 30,000.

According to the experts, the company's refinery and distillery both discharge their untreated waste into the same ditch, contaminating the groundwater. "This is improper waste disposal, and the main problem is the distillery," a source in the Sugar Ministry told IPS.

When they leak down into the subsoil, the waste products create underground pockets of methane, a colourless gas that is inflammable when mixed with air. The methane is produced by anaerobic digestion (in the absence of oxygen) by methanogenic bacteria that break down vegetable material.

"At the start of the rainy season when the groundwater level rises, the water reaches the gas pockets and compresses the methane, which is forced up to the surface," chemical engineer Manuel Pereira told the newspaper.

And Jorge Luis Bregio, a government official in Calimete who used to work for the Jesús Rabí company, said that when the weather was cold, methane gas accumulated inside the roof spaces of houses, "as if it were in a fume hood." The gas came up between the floor tiles, through chinks in walls and floors, or into courtyards through tiny cracks in the ground, he said.

"I knew of a person who went into a cave, and was almost asphyxiated by the presence of methane gas before he was brought out," Alberto Pino, who lives 10 kilometres away from the Jesús Rabí complex, told IPS by telephone.

Other residents of Matanzas said on Tuesday that they had not yet obtained a copy of Juventud Rebelde, but that they were keen on reading the article.

The Sunday, May 7 edition of Juventud Rebelde reported the testimony of María del Carmen Herrera, who suffered serious burns on her arms, back and legs from a fire in her bathroom. During a blackout, she attempted to light her way with a cigarette lighter, and the gas caused an explosion.

In the past, some people used the gas emerging from pits in the ground to improvise open air cooking fires. "Nowadays it seems that the methane is going elsewhere, because of the ditch they dug at the complex, but we do not know who will be harmed in future. The Calimete area has a lot of caves," said Raimundo Rodríguez, another local resident.

"Methane is highly dangerous and can cause explosions. In fact, there have been explosions at other times and places," an expert in the field, who wished to remain anonymous, told IPS.

Oscar Santalla, an expert, told the newspaper that for the past several years, because of "technical shortcomings," the distillery waste has been very acidic, and when added to the sugar mill waste, it cannot be used for "fertigation", a technique combining fertilisation and irrigation which would boost sugarcane yields and curtail pollutants.

In fertigation, liquid wastes from the refinery, distillery wastes and the must from cultivating torula yeast (Candida utilis) are applied directly to crops.

Esperanza Valdés, director of the National Centre for Environmental Management for the sugar industry and its derivatives, confirmed that the Jesús Rabí complex and seven other sugar agribusinesses have been given financing for fertigation projects, which make good use of their industrial waste.

The director-general of the complex, Tomás Zamora, whom IPS was unable to contact by telephone, told Juventud Rebelde that the refinery has already received some of the materials for setting up five irrigation systems that make use of Brazilian technology..

In his opinion, the problem is close to being solved, because the system will permit "recovery of the lakes, and treatment of the waste water." The distillery waste must be decanted from one tank to another, until it is suitable for use in fertigation.

But until such time as the proposed solutions take effect, municipal authorities are afraid that the drinking water for people in the area might become polluted, due to the impact of the untreated waste in the soil and groundwater. Some wells are already fit only for irrigation.

There are two wells in the area that provide drinking water for 4,700 people, more than 2,000 of whom - comprising 685 households - live in the Rabí "batey" (community living in the factory compound). In Matanzas province, 48 percent of the water is derived from the surface, and the rest is groundwater.

Research by the University of Havana Cuban Centre for Economic Studies (CEEC) found that the main pollution problem posed by the sugar industry is the discharge of liquid wastes by sugar mills, refineries, torula yeast factories and distilleries.

These industries are spread throughout most of the municipalities in this Caribbean island nation, and to a greater or lesser extent they have an impact on river basins, bays, coastal areas and inland waters, and also affect the soils around their waste ditches, when these are in poor condition.

However, Santiago Rodríguez Castellón, who has written a research report on this subject, said that the programme for restructuring the sugar industry, which began in 2002, could contribute to the improvement of environmental management and to "changing the socio-economic perspective" on ecological problems.

It is estimated that the 157 sugar mills existent in the mid-1970s used to discharge an average of 36 million cubic metres of liquid waste a year into their surroundings.

The restructuring of what was for decades the country's top industry has left only 71 active sugar mills, 14 honey producing businesses, 25 companies that combine agriculture and livestock, 13 distilleries and 11 torula yeast factories. Around 40 sugar mills took part in this year's harvest.

The Jesús Rabí complex, one of the three agribusinesses in Matanzas which contributed to this year's harvest, has been admonished on several occasions for environmental practices that contravened decree-law No. 200 of 1999.