(Yicai Global) July 22 -- Many cities in China's southernmost Hainan province are in up to their necks trying to dispose of domestic waste generated by a burgeoning population and swelling tourist ranks.

Some trash dumps have exceeded their service life and thus conceal severe safety hazards, financial media Economic Information Daily reported today.

Many cities in Hainan, including Wanning and Qionghai, have problems of low incineration proportions and aging landfills, per the report.

Wanning's dump, which went into operation in 2010 and now contains about 900,000 tons of buried waste, receives over 800 more tons of domestic garbage from Wanning and Qionghai daily. The facility has far exceeded its designed processing scale and is in overload operation, an official from Wanning's environmental protection department said. The landfill's leachate water level is high, so plenty of it containing too many heavy metals may overflow the dump's containment berm in the province's tropical downpours.

A leachate is a liquid that extracts soluble or suspended solids from the material through which it passes.

Water is not the only threat, however. Lightning that struck a landfill in Chengmai county started a fire, which took over nine hours to put out.

Garbage Gargantua

Residents have complained about the 10 million-ton garbage mountain that sprawls over more than 1,000 mu (67 hectares) for many years.

Hainan has many high-temperature days and a spark can ignite biogas seeping from unburied refuse, an official from the local environmental protection bureau said. The entire area is therefore in danger since many medical waste facilities, feed mills, and natural gas companies lie nearby.

The province processes its domestic waste in landfills and incinerators. It has 16 large dumps and five waste-fired power plants. Hainan spent CNY4.9 billion (USD710 million) in building environmental protection infrastructure projects for urban and rural sewage and garbage last year, per the report.

Some areas still suffer from the chronic problem of random dumping of domestic trash, though work is underway to redress this.

The island province dubbed 'China's Hawaii' covers about 35,000 square kilometers. It has introduced various policies to promote tourism and the local economy since 2010.

The ranks of its visitors rose to 76 million last year from 25 million in 2010. 

Editor: Ben Armour