As we showed you last week, the BSI/ASR is attempting to further reduce any environmental impacts that its Tower Hill Mill has on the environment in the Orange Walk District.
They officially unveiled their 8.8-million-dollar Water Cooling Tower, which will ensure that they aren't releasing hot water into the vulnerable New River. During the media tour they hosted last week, the Regional Manager of the company's Environment Health Safety discussed its strict wastewater treatment process. She told us that the effluent released from the sugar mill, which goes into the New River, is not a threat to the environment:
Seidy Lienez - EHS Regional Manager, ASR/BSI
"The wastewater treatment process addresses the organic component. On the other side, what we have there is the COD, in terms of the COD, BOD, and the purification that needs to happen when you treat organic material."
"The chemical oxygen demand and we have the biological oxygen demand. In Belize, we have the regulations for the sugar industry that specifically addresses these parameters, for instance, how much oxygen is in the water, how much you have purified the system, how clean the system is. As simple as I can put it is you have wastewater coming in. You want to purify it through this process so that when it comes out, it's good to go into a stream."
Reporter
"What components make up the wastewater that you're treating in the ponds right now."
Seidy Lienez
"Any washings, for instance, if we have spills and we need to wash those, we don't send that sweet water anywhere else but to our effluent tank, and that effluent tank pumps it for treatment. So, it is not something like any chemicals being added, as you mentioned. It's basically a part of the cleaning process that we have."
Reporter
"For sugar, right?"
Seidy Lienez
"For sugar."
Reporter
"So, this water comes from a separate use."
Seidy Lienez
"It is from any washings within the facility, the sugar processing."
The Department of Environment is in the process of urging all of the other light manufacturing companies along the New River to also prioritize wastewater treatment.
We also asked ASR's Mac McLachlan about the mill's air emissions, which became the subject of controversy back in 2019. In June of that year, residents of the Chan Pine Ridge Village came out swinging at the sugar mill. That's when they suggested that the Tower Hill Facility was polluting their air with ash and smoke produced during the factory's cane milling operation. They also asserted that this ash was affecting their health, as well as the infrastructure of their homes.
Here's what Mac had to say on that topic:
Malcolm "Mac" McLachlan - VP, International Relations, ASR/BSI
"Part of our environmental compliance plan is to ensure that the participate matter that's coming from out of those chimneys fits within regulations. We have had a number of issues with the boilers over the years, and there are various different reasons for that. A lot of it is getting moisture in the boilers, and then, it erodes the system that was in place to control those emissions. So, we took a big decision a year or so back, that we were gonna completely change out that emission system in both boilers. It's a big, big project, again another 10-million-dollar project, and in this off-crop, we have installed a completely different system in one of the boilers. The next off-crop, we'll do the same in the other boiler. That's gonna reduce dramatically the participate matter. But, addressing your issue of Chan Pine Ridge, we have always been conscientious about meeting targets, particularly those that could have an impact on local environments. And as a result of that, we've done a number of different studies on the real impact of BELCOGEN on communities. In fact, part of the due diligence that we did for IDB lending here, was to do that. We have done airflow monitors to check at sensitive sites, such as Chan Pine Ridge and elsewhere. We've always been well within the regulated limits of those sensitive areas. I empathize with Chan Pine Ridge and other areas that do - and I've seen the ash. But, to be honest, the emissions project won't eradicate that problem because that ash is coming from a lot of different sources. We know that we've done some studies where we've checked what that ash is. We've done an analysis of it, and it doesn't have the components that you would expect coming from a high-pressure boiler that we have here. That said, we're doing our bit. We're ensuring that that we're well within all emission targets, and improving - even exceeding actually."
