Gap Region Solid Waste Management Project

* GAP REGION SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT PROJECT
Created by a wide range of domestic and industrial activities, solid wastes increase both in their volume and diversity as a result of such factors as population growth, rising living standards and technological advances While many industrialized countries have solved their problems deriving from solid wastes, most of the developing countries still face this important problem As a developing country, in Turkey too the problem of solid waste management has placed itself in agenda after some adverse experiences
The Law No 1580 on Municipalities as well as the Law No 3030 on Metropolitan Municipalities assigns municipalities the authority and responsibility in matters relating to the collection, transfer and disposal of solid waste Furthermore, the Regulations on the Control of Solid Wastes designed by the Ministry of Environment and taking effect on 14031991 include some provisions for the solution of problems that municipalities face in this field
Emerging at various stages in the process of production and consumption, some solid wastes can be decomposed and re-cycled at the origin while others are just dumped in the environment without any processing The basic principle in an ideal solid waste management scheme is to reduce the volume of solid wastes in the first place At the second stage, the issue is related to the assessment of alternatives for re-cycling and re-using depending upon the volume and composition wastes Finally, the last stage is related to operations of collection, transfer and disposal, again shaped by the volume and composition of wastes
Effective and efficient collection, transfer and disposal of solid wastes is one of the major problems that particularly larger city municipalities face As a matter of fact, municipalities spend about one-third of their annual budgets for garbage collection, transfer and disposal/sanitary landfill services
The objective of the GAP administration is to help local governments solve this problem in a cost-efficient manner, fulfill their legal responsibilities in this field and come up with rational schemes for solid waste management to avoid serious sanitation and public health problems The project "GAP Region Solid Waste Management" carried out by the GAP Administration covers 10 provinces and districts in the region (Provinces of Adiyaman, Batman, Kilis, Siirt and Şırnak and districts of Bismil, Kızıltepe, Nizip, Silvan and Viransehir)
The project envisages 4 stages:


1st stage: Site Selection and Preliminary Feasibility Work
2nd stage: Feasibility Studies and SIA/EIA
3rd stage: Development of Implementation Projects, and
4th stage: Implementation


In May 2001, the Administration contracted out works relating to the first two stages of the project and the contractor TÜSTAS Inc is presently in progress with relevant works The Administration is now planning for the contracting out of the 3rd stage as the completion of the first two stages is nearing
In fact, the 1st stage of the project was completed as of March 2002 In other words, preliminary feasibility work yielded an assessment as to the present situation as well as alternative sites to consider The ongoing 2nd stage will make definitive site selections as landfill areas together with other works related to solid waste control and EIA Regulations This stage will produce SIA and EIA reports
Upon the completion of the project it will be possible to prevent surface and groundwater pollution caused by solid wastes and to avoid many public health problems deriving from random dumping practices