Contentious East End biohazard outlet could double capacity
A medical waste incinerator at Southside that started out facing a battery of opposition generated few complaints to authorities in its early years of operation, according to minutes of the Environmental Authority as well as records provided through a public access to information request.
However, a neighbour of MediWaste told The Royal Gazette that the plant had made its presence felt since it started in 2023, with emissions continuing that he said were like “a burning electric motor”, depending on the wind direction.
“You can tell it’s not regular burning,” said the complainant, who had reported issues anonymously to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and asked not to be named for this report.
“It’s an electric smell, a smell of plastics.”
He said that on a bad day it was enough to leave people in the vicinity — where there are other businesses — feeling “a little nauseous”.
When MediWaste initially sought to allay concerns over its plans with a public meeting in late 2022, the reception from East End residents ranged from scepticism to outrage, and even a threatening confrontation afterwards that left its company head shaken.
Protests and appeals to the Government by opponents followed.
Suspicions over intrusive development run deep in the East End, the complainant told the Gazette.
“St David’s is always known to be unheard, in every aspect,” he said.
“This is just one of them. We feel like nobody listens to us. People can complain, but then it’s back to normal.
“Everything comes here. We’ve got Google coming here now.”
Touching on the area’s sensitive history, particularly the massive development in the 1940s of the US base and airport that swallowed swathes of St David’s, he added: “My family had property here that’s underneath the airport now.”
The DENR reported receiving a complaint of “excessive smoke and smell” about MediWaste in June 2023, the month it started operation.
The department’s records noted that the plant’s incinerator had been warming up at the time, while its testing unit showed no “noncompliant gas concentrations”.
Two more complaints over incidents of “extreme odour” came in November and December 2025, and appear more serious. The plant temporarily suspended operations while the company investigated.
Incident reports revealed the causes: ash accumulation inside equipment for the first case, and, in the second, damage to ceramic elements within the incinerator that MediWaste pledged to replace to “ensure this incident does not happen again”.
For the latter, the report added: “We will be installing an opacity meter on our main stack during the first quarter of 2026 to monitor any haze from our main exhaust stack.”
Records from DENR, as of the end of December, showed no evidence from the monitoring body of the plant’s emissions breaching any regulations.
Nor did they show noncompliance by the company on soil quality at the plant — although the Pati response said that MediWaste was “due to conduct soil analysis around their site in early 2026”.
The soil testing will mark the first since the company’s starting survey in 2023, the year it began operation at a far smaller burning capacity.
If anything, MediWaste’s operations for disposing of the island’s biohazardous waste stand to double this year.
Documents from the company showed that the plant’s recent burning capacity increased significantly, from 160 kilograms (about 350 pounds) a day in September 2024 to a maximum of 700kg (roughly 1,540lb) daily in the year just ended.
MediWaste’s 2025 report said its weekly maximum burn of 4,500kg (9,920lb) at that time stood a good chance of climbing to 9,000kg this year — 19,840lb a week — with its operations rising to 24-hour shifts.
The increase meant that a substantial backlog in medical waste, kept in an array of 20-foot shipping containers at the plant site with more stored at the airport dump, was estimated to be “completed by or before the end of 2026” .
The storage of medical waste — including body parts — off-site in shipping containers is not a first. The Bermuda Hospitals Board, when the disposal of medical waste was still its job, placed several in Dockyard as its facility dealt with a backlog of its own.
News of MediWaste coming to Southside went public in March 2022 after Donte Hunt, the business owner, got the contract for his company to take over the rendering of waste generated at the hospital along with everything from pharmacies, labs, clinics, barber shops, tattoo parlours, doctors’ offices, rest homes and veterinary clinics.
Previously, all of it had been collected and transported by the Department of Health.
King Edward VII Memorial Hospital was equipped with its own incinerator to handle the next stage — but the hospital’s board insisted that KEMH had never been the right location for the job of high-temperature disposal.
MediWaste won planning approval for its Southside facility in September 2022.
Although the plant was situated in industrially zoned land, its introduction to a business area still proved a tough sell with St David’s residents, who felt they should have been given a say.
By his own admission at the time, Mr Hunt — who declined to comment last week — was taken aback by the outcry, telling the Gazette: “I went over the regulations and the due diligence done, our technology in terms of emissions being well under the UK’s standards.
“I did not foresee how it [the protest] would grow.”
However, former protesters contacted last week suggested there was little point in continuing the fight — although some were aware of the recent complaints over harsh-smelling smoke emanating from the plant.
One, who declined to be named, said: “I was involved — but since they were given it against our wishes, they just put it there and that’s that.
“They don’t come to the residents to ask us how we feel about it.”
Minutes from the Environmental Authority showed MediWaste, with two incinerators and a “pet crematory”, started business in June 2023, although the plant got knocked out by lightning that August, resuming operation in the October.
Issues with compliance show in EA minutes from October 2024, where the facility was faulted for “significant quantities of sharps boxes” left outside containers.
“Sharps” cover medical devices with points or cutting edges, including syringes and lancets.
The EA reported seeing more sharps boxes stored in a container with bags of ash, with at least one spilling ash, while an inspector found more ash spilt on the ground outside.
The authority requested to meet with company representatives in light of “missed deadlines for reporting”.
The DENR’s post-inspection letters to MediWaste in 2024 and 2025 highlighted similar cases of noncompliance over the storage of clinical waste and spillage of ash.
A December 2025 letter to the company from the department also noted dark smoke that month from the MediWaste stack, along with unsecure storage of medical waste and “clinical waste being stored in unrefrigerated containers”.
Overall, however, MediWaste’s latest annual report stated there had been “no formal complaints” received between the start of the 2024 operating licence and its conclusion last year.
The report added: “We have had some complaints since September, and we are working to improve our maintenance and reduce and stop all complaints.”
The report noted the hiring of a new operator for the plant this month which, along with a fuel rebate in the pipeline, could double MediWaste’s burning capacity.
In response, the area complainant said that more business for MediWaste need not be a bad thing — “if it helps them get their equipment up to date”.
• To read documents relating to our MediWaste investigation, see Related Media
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