has been little change in the way it is run.

Mr. Nelson Hunt of Hunt's Sanitation & Excavating Services is currently being paid $30,167 a month to operate the "special waste management programme'' for the Ministry of Works & Engineering.

The previous contractor, Mr. Richard Bell, was paid just over $4,000 a month to operate the same Airport dump.

A jump in the price of the new contract, which closed late in 1993, was not unexpected. The Ministry reworked the specifications, calling for an ambitious programme by which cars would have their batteries and tires removed, their oils and other fluids drained, and would then be crushed before being dumped into Castle Harbour at the Airport landfill.

Mr. Bill Goodings, the Ministry's solid waste manager, said the contract was "very comprehensive,'' and depended on the successful bidder having his own site away from the Airport dump to process cars and other metals.

But Mr. Hunt, who could not be reached for comment, has yet to receive Planning Department approval for a quarry site in Warwick where that work was to occur. Each Tuesday, cars deposited at the dump by the Transport Control Department and others are pushed into the harbour much as they arrived.

Yesterday, colourful plumes of oil and other car fluids streaked through the water as a bulldozer pushed cars into the sea. The cars had not been crushed, and many still had tyres on them.

"It's business as usual -- that is to say, business as it was prior to him getting that contract,'' acknowledged Mr. Goodings.

But as part of the contract, Mr. Hunt was also being paid for work away from the dump, like collecting aluminium and batteries around the Island, shipping batteries to the US, and trucking metal waste from the Tynes Bay Incinerator to the Airport dump, he said.

Mr. Goodings said a breakdown of contract values was confidential, but management of the Airport site was the largest single element. Machinery at the Airport, which includes a bulldozer but no crusher, costs $60 to $90 an hour to run, he said.

Because the quarry site where Mr. Hunt was to drain and crush the cars is not yet operating, the $362,000 a year that Mr. Hunt is being paid represents only 68 percent of the full value of the contract, Mr. Goodings said. Once the site in Warwick is up and running, payments will increase to $44,333 a month, or $532,000 a year.

Today, "he's not being paid for anything he's not doing''.

However, Mr. Goodings said the Ministry has recently been sending a labourer to the Airport dump to perform duties that it feels should be performed by Mr.

Hunt as part of the contract The man's job is to make sure that items are not left at the dump which do not belong there, Mr. Goodings said. But instead, Mr. Hunt should have a uniformed supervisor doing that, at no extra cost to the Ministry during regular hours, he said.

After-hours security is also needed, and extra payment would be negotiated for that, Mr. Goodings said. Mr. Hunt also sometimes receives extra payments for cleaning up outside the gate of the Airport dump, Mr. Goodings confirmed.

The former contractor, Mr. Bell, said the cleanliness of the dump was about the only change he had noticed since he stopped operating the Airport site at a fraction of the cost.

"I had an opportunity to put a bid in (on the new contract), but it just called for too much,'' said Mr. Bell, who held the old contract for more than ten years. "It called for overseas connections and more machinery -- a crusher, and different things like that.

"I didn't bother to apply for it. It was out of my league.'' But today, "I don't see much different from what I was doing,'' he said. "It used to be a little cleaner -- a lot cleaner, and a lot safer.'' Mr. Hunt has been waiting almost 18 months for Development Applications Board approval to recycle cars at the old Toddings Quarry, west of Khyber Pass in Warwick, where the waste contractor already has an operation that includes a warehouse.

Planning Director Mr. Brian Rowlinson said that after one application from Mr.

Hunt was refused by the DAB last year, Mr. Hunt reapplied. This time, he has promised to satisfy neighbours by building a new access to the quarry off Middle Road, rather than the Railway Trail. The new application has yet to be heard.

About 1,400 cars a year go to the dump. And about 80,000 tires, which Mr. Hunt will be chipping -- once he gets approval. For now, the tires too are going in the water.

As for the lack of draining, "for the most part, oils and CFCs and those things don't arrive at the Airport,'' Mr. Goodings said. At the dump, "oils are generally taken out of the cars, but not 100 percent''.

The Ministry is about to require Mr. Hunt to start draining cars at the Airport site, a change which could result in another increase in payments to Mr. Hunt, he said.

Just as Mr. Hunt's contract proposal said there were to be two employees at the dump -- one at the gate and one on the equipment -- the specifications say that the cars and other large items are supposed to be crushed.

Mr. Hunt "crushes some'', while "others he pushes straight away'', because he wants to prevent erosion by keeping a bulky face on the pile of metal under water, Mr. Goodings said. "It doesn't matter to the sea whether it's crushed or not.'' Blocks made from concrete and incinerator ash are being used to build a lagoon to hold the metal waste, but it will not be completed for more than a year.

Meanwhile, far more metal is going to the Airport landfill than ever. The Pembroke Dump, which has been closed, was apparently taking much more metal than officials knew.

As well as collecting aluminium for the Ministry to ship, Mr. Hunt shipped 17,000 batteries overseas last year, Mr. Goodings said.

"He collects them, sends a truck around,'' Mr. Goodings said of batteries.

"Of those that get to the Airport, if he's alert, he pulls them out.''