Baguio garbage woes threaten ‘Forevermore’ mountain

Frank Cimatu

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Baguio garbage woes threaten ‘Forevermore’ mountain
If Baguio Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan is pushed into a corner over the city’s garbage problem, a government property in Mt. Sto. Tomas may soon become the highest garbage landfill in the country

BAGUIO, Philippines – At more than 2,250 meters, Mt. Sto. Tomas is the highest mountain in Baguio. It is beside Mt. Cabuyao which you can see atop downtown Baguio beside the Mickey Mouse ears. It was also the “La Presa” in that popular telenovela, Forevermore.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) limited tourists coming into the twin mountains, but if Baguio Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan is pushed into a corner over the city’s garbage problem, a government property in Mt. Sto. Tomas may soon become the highest garbage landfill in the country.

Domogan said the city’s 50-hectare property in the Sto. Tomas School area might just serve as Baguio’s sanitary landfill with a waste-to-energy facility if the city runs out of options.

He said that the city is still looking at the former Antamok open pit mining site for its proposed sanitary landfill.

The Cordillera office of the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB-CAR) said the proposed sites of the engineered sanitary landfill (ESL) and the waste-to-energy (WTE) facility within portions of the Antamok open pit are feasible pursuant to the standards prescribed by existing laws, rules and regulations.

Benguet Corporation, the owner of the open pit, entered into an agreement a year ago with the LGUs of Itogon and Baguio City for the use of the mining company’s Antamok open pit site to put up a sanitary landfill with WTE facility through a private partner, Goldrich Natural Explorations and Development, Inc.

If the negotiations fail, however, garbage trucks would have to go up Sto. Tomas and dump its garbage there.

“The city will have to appropriate the required funds to build the road network within the property to help facilitate the construction of the sanitary landfill,” Domogan said.

“In the meantime, we have to wait for the realization of the same project within the Benguet Corporation property in Itogon to guide us in our future decisions on how to effectively and efficiently address our garbage disposal woes,” he added.

Based on initial estimates from the City Engineering Office, the local government needs at least P300 million to build the road network within the city-owned property before the construction of the sanitary landfill facility can be implemented considering the existing terrain in the area.

It also earmarked about P5 million for the fencing of the perimeter of a portion of the property for this proposed purpose but the project cannot proceed because the residents in the area allegedly removed the monuments that were placed by the members of the survey team identifying the metes and bounds of the proposed landfill site.

This goes along with the city’s 10-year solid waste management plan, which was approved by the National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC). The city-owned property was identified as the proposed site for the sanitary landfill and WTE facility which will include a small engineered sanitary landfill, a centralized materials recovery facility, an anaerobic digester, a WTE plant, two Environmental Recycling System (ERS) machines, a hazardous waste treatment plant and a special waste treatment plant.

The city, however, has chosen to ignore that the Baguio Water District built one of its reservoirs at Mt. Cabuyao. The proposed sanitary landfill might create leachate that can contaminate the soil or the city’s water table.

Also, the story of the Irisan “trashslide” remained fresh in people’s minds. In August 2011, the retaining wall of the Irisan landfill collapsed, causing an avalanche that buried houses in Asin, killing 4 people.

Due to this, the city decided to pay more than P1 billion for the hauling of the city’s garbage to the sanitary landfill in Capas, Tarlac. – Rappler.com

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