High-ranking Government Official Rejected Phoenix

Port-au-Prince, HAITI, 22 March 2013 – “We did not agree with the project.”

With that simple statement, a Haitian government official made clear her opinion of the Phoenix project, a massive 30 megawatt plant that would allegedly turn trash into electricity. [Read original Haiti Grassroots Watch story here.]

Edwige Petit, director of sanitation at the National Direction for Potable Water and Sanitation (DINEPA in French), made her opposition clear while speaking at the “Truth on a Drum: Little Stories about our Garbage” screening and discussion on March 16 at the Foundation for Knowledge and Freedom (FOKAL in Creole).

“We analyzed it and we noted that the project would never be able to collect all the trash in the metropolitan area,” Petit said while speaking to a large audience after the projection of films about garbage in two capitals: Cairo and Port-au-Prince.

Edwige Petit, director of sanitation at the National Direction for Potable
Water and Sanitation (DINEPA in French), speaking at the “Truth on a Drum:
Little Stories about our Garbage” activity at the Foundation for Knowledge
and Freedom (FOKAL in Creole) on March 16 2013.

She is seated between Lafontaine Orvild, journalist and assistant coordinator
for Haiti Grassroots Watch (left) and Edson Lubin, in charge of setting up
a community trash management system for the Martissant park (right).
Photo: HGW/Milo Milfort

Petit, who was part of the solid waste management team at the Haitian Ministry of Public Works when the Phoenix Project first appeared, said that, as she understands it, the project “is not concerned with all of the garbage, only the garbage that has caloric value. So, what interest would it have in ferreting out the entirity of the trash?”

“We advised the government to turn the project down,” Petit remembered.

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