Illegal dumping is a “serious, serious problem,” stated to Derek Gabriel, chair of the board governing the Virgin Islands Waste Management Authority.
During Tuesday’s board meeting on the agency’s budget for fiscal year 2026, Mr. Gabriel advocated for stronger action to be taken against perpetrators. “I am one of those people that believes in posting the people that are doing the illegal dumping when we catch them,” he declared.
To illustrate the severity of the situation, Mr. Gabriel, commissioner of the Department of Public Works, recounted conducting a site visit at a particular location along with the St. Croix administrator and officials from the Department of Planning and Natural Resources. “People are dumping as we’re securing a site,” he recalled. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have no problem in saying that is a community problem. That is not a government problem,” he argued.
He noted that all residents ultimately pay the price for illegal dumping. “This is why we’re having discussions about where to put proper surcharges on E-waste, on white goods and other items.”
Mr. Gabriel advocated for a strategy of publicizing the culprits. “If people are going to continue to dump illegally, then we are just going to have to catch them and charge them and shame them,” he declared. “People need to know it is their neighbor that’s costing them. Because here it is, we are considering raising fees across the board to clean up for illegal dumping.”
Cooking oil is a huge component of the illicit dumping, Mr. Gabriel said. “The amount of oil that we’re collecting in the territory makes you think that all we have here are food trucks and restaurants,” he quipped, lamenting pushback on WMA’s attempts to enforce regulations. “We get public backlash when we simply ask vendors or restaurants to show their oil disposal contracts….it does not go both ways,” Mr. Gabriel declared. “We cannot, as a community, continue to ask the government to give goods and services while we are creating more problems than we are creating solutions.”
“The fundamental pillar of any community is how you deal with your waste,” the WMA chair concluded. “We’ve got to start taking it seriously in this territory.”
British Caribbean News
