GHD newsletter article

Volunteer Service Abroad – Vanuatu

Sean Toland shares his expectations before heading off to Luganville in the island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu to do a six month stint with Volunteer Service Abroad (VSA). 

Volunteering for an extended period has been something that I had planned to do at some stage but was always put on the back burner. My main motivator in volunteering is to experience something new and different. You could spend your life doing exactly the same thing over and over, or you can go out and do something a little different and learn something fresh.

When the VSA/GHD partnership was announced at Team Brief last year I was pleasantly surprised and knew that now was the time. It was only a matter of finding a suitable assignment to get involved with.

Luganville has an issue with waste management. There are no engineered landfills in the area and since the end of World War II waste has been dumped into an old quarry. There is a charge to dump the waste and then it is burned. Once a year the site gets tidied up by bulldozing the area and then the process starts again.  The quarry is not lined or engineered in any way for the disposal of waste and is completely uncontrolled, therefore there are problems with vermin, birds, leachate, dust, smoke and all the usual contaminants associated with these sites. 

 

Municipality Staff at Town Dump

The main problem with the exposed waste is that it attracts birds.  It is causing an increased danger of bird strike on aeroplanes for the local airport and flights were cancelled as a result of the danger.  With the threat to tourist revenue local authorities are finally placing a high priority on fixing this issue and with the promise of the issue being addressed and the landfill being relocated away from the flight path, flights have been reinstated. 

At present Luganville Municipal Council and Sanma Provincial Council as well as another VSA Volunteer in the field, Mary O’Reilly, formerly of URS, are working on this project.  Mary has been in Vanuatu for 18 months working on waste management and undertaken waste characterisation studies and drawn up a waste management plan.  It is through Mary’s work that my role was identified.

Mary at the town dump.

I will undertake preliminary site investigation as well as technical investigations to identify a suitable site in the Luganville area as well as develop a closure plan for the dump at the quarry.  Locating a new site may prove difficult as landownership rights are completely different to that in New Zealand and the process may become drawn-out.  There is a small possibility the current site may prove most suitable and will therefore require the necessary changes in its management and engineering.  My role also covers Landfill Design, Operations as well as Monitoring and Closure plans and I expect it to evolve significantly as the project progresses.  

The assignment in Vanuatu is expected to last six months although nothing is definite yet so this could change. It depends on how the project progresses. It would seem optimistic that a dump like this will be closed and capped and a new engineered landfill located, constructed and a management plan put in place in that timeframe.

VSA has put me in touch with Mary so I can find out more about the project and get more information before I go.  They have prepared me as much as they can and have been thorough in supplying me with as much information as possible. My initial day long interview in Wellington included an hour with a psychiatrist to ensure that I won’t go off the deep end in stressful situations. They put me through medicals and ensured that I had all the relevant vaccinations.

Before I had the job, I spent four days in Wellington on the VSA induction programme covering everything from keeping good mental health on location, the art of photography, getting along and working with the locals and learning the language. The VSA programme manager is always available to answer questions and keep me up to date on the process before I go to Vanuatu. Of course, all this doesn’t compare with actually being there and I am sure it will be a different story on the ground.

I have no great expectations of the assignment at present. I plan to go to Vanuatu with an open mind and see what happens. In the back of my mind it feels like there will be a fairly steep learning curve from the start. I will have to learn Bislama, the local pidgin English, as well as working out the technicalities of the assignment. The temptation to jump in feet first with a gung ho attitude may also have to be reined in. The first month or so will probably be spent sussing out what is actually happening on the ground. Culture shock is expected!

Green Waste from the Town Market being diverted for compost.

The waste management team at GHD Sydney have expressed some interest in supporting me on the assignment. I have been speaking to Dave Barrett there who has experience in similar projects in places such as post-war Kosovo and has extensive waste management experience in Ireland and Australia. David and I were colleagues at Golder Ireland. Before I go to Vanuatu I hope to figure out a way to have the Sydney waste management team involved on a regular basis or whether I complete my final assignment reports in Sydney.  

The Auckland Environment and Planning team have been very supportive of me since I expressed an interest in the assignment and luckily there have been no dissenting voices at the idea of someone swanning off into the sunset to some tropical island paradise. To be honest, mental images of burning piles of municipal waste in an abandoned quarry haunt me anytime I become a little dreamy.

Barry Potter and Evan Mayson, who have both completed stints with VSA, are very supportive and able to provide some good advice as to what to expect on assignment. They are keen to talk to anyone interested in an assignment with VSA and to share their experiences with them. It is hoped that this assignment will be the start of a productive partnership with VSA and that GHD will provide volunteers on a regular basis to VSA in years to come.  If this assignment goes well I am open to other assignments, should any suitable ones arise.