–The tale of Whein Town
By Laymah Kollie
Liquid waste from the Whein Town landfill site meandering its way into the community. Source: DUBAWA.
What started as a temporary emergency dumpsite in 2007 to cater for Monrovia’s solid waste has become a permanent horrific nightmare for residents living in the ‘garbage city’ of Whein Town, Monrovia, Liberia.
DUBAWA’s investigations and tests of liquid samples at the Whein Town landfill have uncovered deadly substances with risks of kidney failure, pneumonia, meningitis, food poisoning, etc, to the people living in the community of Whein Town. Already, scores have died over strange diseases and explosions, and dozens continue to endure the terror of living with toxins, snakes, and other dangerous reptiles, all from the 40-acre landfill site perching on the outskirts of Monrovia in a community located in Paynesville, District#4 Montserrado County.
According to members of the community, their air is fouled by day through the stench and indiscriminate burning of solid waste, and their groundwater, their only source of water, is polluted at night through the liquid waste that seeps from the hilly mountains of garbage into the low lying valleys of Whein Town. Life in the garbage city is lived by grace, with a daily appointment with death from common mosquito bites to lethal reptile attacks. Over 20,000 residents, the majority of them women and children, live in Whein Town, which has become the ‘garbage city’ of Monrovia, waiting to die if help doesn’t come.
“When it rains, the water from the dumpsite, along with faeces and snakes, roll down to us. The entire place can be flooded, we can’t go out, and our children can’t go to school for that number of days,” Laura Wilson, an Elementary School Teacher and mother of six narrated to the researcher.
DUBAWA takes an in-depth look at the crisis with an attempt to retell the story of residents living and dying in the garbage city. Their community, the government, and even international organisations have left them to their fate.
In the beginning….
A World Bank document dubbed Emergency Monrovia Urban Sanitation Project (EMUS) sighted by DUBAWA indicates that the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC) in 2007 acquired acres of land, the size of approximately 10 football fields to be used as an “emergency” landfill site. According to page 5 of the document, the site “is too small to act as a long-term facility and highlights the need to expedite the development of a long-term facility.”
While it is not illegal to operate a landfill site, such sites, by global standards, need to be managed and attended to professionally given the potential public health crisis it comes along with especially for communities sited close to the landfill site.
Indeed, according to the community members, the site was well operated with the support of the World Bank and didn’t have a primary effect on the community in its early stages. Dwellers confirmed that workers on the dumpsite used to cover every garbage deposited in the area at the end of each working day, which was in line with global landfilling procedures. But all that has changed in the last decade or more.
The landfill now covers approximately 40 hectares. It was estimated to receive some 350 tons of waste per day from Monrovia and its surroundings. Poyry Gmbh was independently contracted for 10 years to manage the landfill before it was later turned over to the MCC and the government of Liberia.
Therefore, it was not surprising that in the early years of the landfill site, the managers highlighted progressive landfilling procedures needed to keep the site safe and tidy.
The procedures cited include:
- “If any deposit consists of mainly organic or small quantities of household hazardous material, it should be covered with at least 600 mm of earth (or other material), e.g. neon light bulbs, batteries, and paints or detergents.
- Every deposit of waste must be kept tidy.
- All around the site, the landfill should be kept free of litter. To ensure this, the site should be inspected at least weekly.
- The access road to the site should also be kept free of litter and mud. Similar inspections should be carried out.
- All drainage pipes and ditches should be kept in working order.
- Hospital waste, including potentially hazardous waste containing sharp materials (needles, blades, contaminated glass, etc.), should be collected and removed through the District/ Provincial/ or National controlled service and never disposed of at a general Landfill.
- Animal carcasses should be buried on site and covered with lime.
- Community members should not be allowed on the site except for private contractors.
By global standards, “the site life for any landfill is determined by the airspace and the quantity of waste disposed of.” According to the World Bank document (page 17), “the airspace availability for the site is for only 5 years,” with a possibility of an extension. It also cautioned against the disposal of hospital waste, which must never be disposed of in or near a public landfill (Page 11).
After 18 years of operating the landfill, 13 years more than the initial airspace and site life would allow, DUBAWA attempted to find out firsthand if the standard operating procedures outlined in the document are being adhered to and what the community members feel after having experimented with the landfill site for close to two decades.
“We are suffering here from this dirt. Our children are not safe, and neither are we, the parents. The manager over the dumpsite does not clean the place. We see snakes every time, and if there is no one to kill them, they go back into the dirt. We have seen cobras on this fence twice. The mosquitoes here are big, like flies. Right now, I’m sick from typhoid. The trucks coming here don’t have safety rules. They run in the community anyhow,” Dee V Forkpah, a mother of five, told DUBAWA.
According to the residents, the situation was dire in 2024 because of the extreme heat conditions.
“When there is a fire in the dumpsite, before you walk from here to the main road your eyes can get red from the smoke,” 22-year-old Winston Wayne stated. “This year wasn’t easy. The fire lasted longer than expected. Community dwellers had to join hands in putting it off.”
If community members are required to douse flames at the dumpsite, this means that a key part of the procedures to keep the general public away from the confines of the landfill site has been flouted with dire repercussions.
To confirm this fact, the investigator attempted to access the confines of the site and managed to take close shots and videos of a landfill site begging to be treated and kept tidy and hygienic.
However, the community’s problem is not unique to the dry season. It is probably worse in the rainy season.
Obed T Crawford, Registrar for a school in the community (King’s College Africa Hope Mission) close to the landfill site, recounted, “In August of this year, the fence around the garbage broke when kids were in school. The dirt moved into the compound, and there were lots of stones and baby pampers all around the school.”
He said that on several occasions, the garbage was set on fire, and the dark plume meandered its way into the students’ eyes, which now struggle for visibility. Their eyes are most often left red, itchy, and watery.
That life in Whein Town is a daily risk is an understatement. Safe drinking water is a luxury only few can afford in the community. Residents rely heavily on contaminated water to cook, drink, and wash. Those who can afford it usually purchase mineral (parboiled) water for their homes.
68-year-old Josephine Soko explains, “We live down the hill from the dumpsite, so anytime it rains, the rain brings it down to our wells. We are all sick from this. There is fever, coughing, headache, and body ache. We deal with well water, most of which is from septic tanks. We just need the government to come in and at least help us with the dumpsite and safe drinking water.”
Checks by DUBAWA indicate that five poly tanks were provided by the government as a source of safe drinking water for the community. However, since 2022, all the poly tanks have become obsolete, leaving the community members to revert to the contaminated groundwater.
Waste Category
Contrary to the landfilling procedures, it has emerged that all the waste collected from Monrovia and other parts of Montserrado is dumped into the Whein Town Landfill. The site has become the dumping ground for various waste products from residential facilities, hospitals, industries, commercial markets, and offices around Monrovia. Entities such as Monrovia City Corporation (MCC), Paynesville City Corporation (PCC), Libra Sanitation, and the Jeremiah Kpan-Koung&Joseph Nyumah Boakai Foundation (JKK&JNK Foundation) are major disposers of waste in the site.
The MCC and PCC collect waste from hospitals, government agencies, ministries, and commercial areas around Monrovia, including the Redlight, Omega, and Duala Markets. Libra Sanitation also collects infectious and non-infectious waste from the John F Kennedy Memorial Hospital (the biggest government hospital) and industrial waste from other private entities across Monrovia. JKK&JNK Foundation also assists MCC and PCC in garbage collection around the city.
Also, the dumping of hospital waste at the landfill site directly violates the key provisions of the landfilling procedures, which has dire consequences for the unsuspecting public.
Personal Hygiene
Whilst the people of Whein Town are largely victims of the government’s insanitary conditions expressed through a poorly managed landfill site, personal and community hygiene issues remain a challenge. DUBAWA spotted a food joint within the community and not too far from the landfill site where community dwellers compete with flies, ants, and other insects for local delicacies. Nothing can spread cholera and diarrhoea faster.
To make matters worse, Samuel Koffi Jones, Secretary of Whein Town, told DUBAWA that there is no public health facility in the community except for a private clinic a few meters away from the landfill site. The Bengee Medical and Maternity Clinic is about a 10-minute walk from the landfill.
Mr Sayzay Kezele, Supervisor of Bengee Medical and Maternity clinic, confirmed to DUBAWA that patients usually treat themselves at home due to financial constraints. He said people only visit the clinic when the situation gets worse since it is a private hospital.
Kezele also confirmed receiving high cases of malaria, typhoid, and diarrhea at his facility. According to the administrator, kids are highly affected by malaria, as per his record.
“Between 45 to 50 people report here every month with malaria. This is a private clinic, so the intake of patients can be reduced. Malaria is the most common illness, Kids between ages 1 to 5 account for many cases,” he said.
“This week, a two-month-old baby came here with 2+ malaria,” Kezele recounted. “Typhoid and diarrhea cases can be between 15 to 20 cases monthly. Some cases come here above us, and we can transfer them quickly to the hospital. Prominent of those cases are diarrhea, malaria, typhoid,” he said.
Even though the clinic is helping to save lives, DUBAWA’s checks indicate it is one of the hospitals that also dispose of its waste at the site.
Several attempts by the youth and community dwellers to draw the government’s attention to their plight have fallen on deaf ears. According to Samuel Koffi Jones, Secretary of Whein Town, the community staged a series of protests from 2010 to 2014 when they observed people drowning in the community due to the dumpsite’s effects.
The liquid test
There have been reports of strange deaths in the community but it appears these deaths are not strange afterall. On one of the adventurous trips to the landfill site, a drop of liquid waste accidentally touched the investigator’s skin, leading to severe itching and small blisters. The investigator took a sample of the liquid waste for testing at the National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL), and the results were mind-boggling. It confirmed in magnifying proportions the danger the community members face daily living with the toxins in Whein town. The test proved that there were three deadly organisms in the liquid waste. They include E. coli, Serratia marcescens, and Citrobacter freundii.
Screenshot of Results from NPHIL
Experts advised that people should avoid the landfill because of its dangers.
Stressing that “such places should be avoided, people should not stay there. It is dangerous for their lives. Garbage should be several kilometres away from inhabitants. It is bad for a landfill to be in a swamp because it will affect the soil and contaminate the waters.”
Francis Jaryan, a Research Scientist, recommends treating the environment by spraying the water and atmosphere with insecticides and properly educating the community about dirt dumping at the site. He then urged that an authorised sign be placed at the landfill illustrating “no dumping dirt here” while the government relocates the site.
With these new findings, DUBAWA proceeded to the government and the MCC to find out their reactions and what they were doing to address the residents’ plight.
The Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency told DUBAWA that, based on his recent ascendency to the position, he was unaware of the issues unfolding in Whein Town. Emmanuel Yarkpawolo said despite limited efforts made to cater to challenges confronting the community, it doesn’t mean the government is ignoring the situation. The Director acknowledged that his attention had just been thrown to the situation through DUBAWA’s investigation. He promised to work with the MCC and other relevant authorities for a total closure of the dumpsite.
“I’m not really aware of this Whein Town landfill. ’m just getting to know it through the information you are providing me now. I’m told the site is overfilled, so I will work with other government agencies responsible to shut down the site.”
He added, “In terms of hospital waste disposal at Whein Town, it should not be so. We will investigate that, and any hospital found in that act will face the consequences for that. Hospitals should have well-structured areas to take care of their waste and not public sites, especially in communities with people.”
In light of the tenure for the site closure, the EPA Director said he cannot state a time because the government has some challenges, which include establishing a new landfill for garbage disposal and putting quality measures in place. However, he’ll work with the Water and Sewer agency to provide safe drinking water for residents in the interim.
However, all efforts applied to speak with the City Mayor of Monrovia City Corporation, the entity with the primary responsibility to manage the landfill site didn’t yield results.
The Director of Press Varney Diggs at MCC asked DUBAWA to provide him with the questions so the appropriate responses will be provided. DUBAWA obliged and sent the questions to Mr Diggs, hoping a response will come but it never did.
Conclusion
It is clear the MCC has reneged on its primary responsibility of professionally managing the landfill site thereby putting lives of the people in the community at Whein Town at risk every single day. DUBAWA will follow this issue to its logical conclusion
