Piles of trash feared to submerge homes: Tuba urges DENR: Probe Baguio garbage spillover

By Dexter A See

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet — The provincial board has endorsed a resolution passed by the Tuba municipal council calling on the Cordillera office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to investigate continuous spillover of garbage from the closed Irisan dumpsite in Baguio City to Tadiangan, Tuba.

Tuba residents said they fear an epidemic if the problem is not addressed sooner adding their homes could be submerged by trash during a storm or heavy rains.

The spillover of tons of garbage from Baguio ’s open dumpsite has been a perennial problem
of Tadiangan, whose residents have been greatly inconvenienced by the piles of trash on Asin Road

The dumpsite has been closed for over six months now.

The Tuba municipal council accused the Baguio city government of failure to act on requests by the municipal government to adopt preventive and measures that would prevent the tons of garbage from spilling over to Asin Road , a major road linking Baguio to some parts of Tuba.

The municipal government has asked the National Solid Waste Commission to impose sanctions on the city government for alleged neglect and inaction on the overflowing garbage that has inconvenienced the residents.

Last July, hundreds of residents of Barangay Tadiangan joined Irisan barangay folk in padlocking the five-hectare dumpsite in protest of the overflowing garbage.

The problem has also caused untold hardship to people passing through the road from Kilometer 6 down to parts of Tadiangan especially during heavy rains.

The Tuba municipal council said the spillover of Baguio ’s garbage has been going on since the 1970s when municipal officials requested for the first time the Baguio city government to set up structures in the dumpsite to prevent the overflow.

Some 30 years have passed, but no concrete action was taken by the city government.

The affected local government units are now seeking the intervention of concerned national government agencies to compel the city government to fulfill its promise to solve the perennial problem.

Provincial and municipal officials expressed fears there would come a time when the tons of garbage at the Irisan dumpsite would cascade and bury the whole village of Tadiangan .

Despite the repeated promise of the city government to rehabilitate the dumpsite, the problem of overflowing garbage has not been solved.

As a result, the frequent garbage spillover has polluted some water sources as well as brooks and creeks. The spillover has also made the surroundings unsanitary, posing risks to the health of the residents