And he has also urged the Government to live up to the 12-year-old promise ? made by Sir John's own administration ? to build the Dr. E.F. Gordon Memorial Park on the Pembroke site.

Sir John said he wrote to Premier Alex Scott two years ago to spell out the danger of continuing to build up the mountain of waste at the site.

The marshland site was used as a landfill site for household waste until it was replaced by the Tynes Bay incinerator, which came online in the mid-1990s.

"I have warned the Government that the dumping should be stopped immediately," Sir John said yesterday. "As it piles up higher, the risk gets greater that the heavy waste below it will be pushed through the membrane of vegetation and into the water.

"If any of those objects fall into that water, then an important freshwater resource, which covers a huge area from Pembroke to Smith's Parish, could be contaminated.

"I wrote to the Premier two years ago saying that it was never intended that it would be built up like this and saying the dumping must be stopped."

Sir John was Premier from 1982 to 1995 and that time saw the birth of the plan to build what was hailed as "Bermuda's Central Park" on top of the old dump.

A Government-commissioned Harvard University study into the site was used as a blueprint for the plan to build a 23-acre park, including jogging and horse-riding trails, woodlands and a playground.

Foul smells used to emanate from the dump in the days it was used as a refuse tip, affecting a heavily populated area around it. And the park plan was as popular with the Opposition Progressive Labour Party as it was with Sir John's United Bermuda Party Government.

The plan was overseen by the Ministry of Works & Engineering and Sir John said he thought it was important to push ahead with it now.

"It was a commitment given by my Government, but the PLP Opposition was acquiescent, and I think we should live up to that promise to the people of Bermuda," Sir John said.

"A park to be used by the whole community would encourage people to build more in the city. But all I see there is a massive mountain of waste and I'm very disappointed."

In 1994, Sir John's Government estimated that it would take eight to ten years for the park to become a reality.

PLP Pembroke East MP Nelson Bascome was then unimpressed by the time-frame. Mr. Bascome said: "It's definitely too long and beyond the time-span of the five-year phasing programme the Harvard group recommended. I expected at the maximum three to four years."

Two other PLP Pembroke MPs expressed similar impatience. The late David Allen said at the time: "If anything, people are concerned about when the park is going to become a reality.

"I have heard nothing further about the park and have the feeling that they (Government) are just stalling. We want to know exact dates and times."

Mr. Allen's Parliamentary colleague Stanley Morton said: "I can tell you that in some instances people have given up hope that it will come within their lifetime."

Twelve years later and with the PLP now in power, it proved more difficult to get a comment from the relevant member of the party yesterday.

We asked Works & Engineering Minister David Burch if there was still a plan to create a park and if so, what stage it had reached. He did not respond by press time.

The park was to have been named after Dr. E.F. Gordon, a Trinidadian who came to Bermuda in 1924, and who was instrumental in the formation of the predecessor of the Bermuda Industrial Union, and for lobbying for workers' rights.

The original plan entailed planting 4,000 trees and covering the tip with 60,000 cubic yards of soil and rock. Most of the soil had to be created through composting horticultural waste.

In 1995, Government brought in a new machine that massively sped up the process of grinding the horticultural waste to make the necessary soil.

Leonard Gibbons, Works Minister of the time, said this week: "I'm very disappointed the park plan has not come to fruition yet.

"The original plan would have to be modified now because the hill has got a a lot higher. It certainly would be a lovely green area to have, particularly if we are going to lose part of the Botanical Gardens to the new hospital."

He said the compost grinder had been a huge success and that many people had taken advantage of its product to fertilise and condition their garden soil.

"One of the issues I had to wrestle with was where else we would put the horticultural waste when we built the park," Mr. Gibbons said. "You need a fairly big area for the job, because there is a large volume of stuff, particularly after storms, and it would not be easy to find a suitable place, though not impossible."

Sir John had a suggestion on how to use up the compost.

"We have to look for alternative sites to put the horticultural waste around the island," the ex-Premier said. "There are indentations in the island that could be filled in to create mini-parks.

"For example, there are places that were dug out when the railroad was being built that could now be filled in with compost and grassed over. This compost could be used for beautification of those places.

"What's important is that we need to stop dumping waste in Pembroke as fast as possible and make it into a park, in the interests of having a healthier environment."