Execs undecided on Baguio garbage woes

By Dexter A. See

BAGUIO CITY — Local residents and tourists, including the whole team Pacquiao, will have to weather the serious negative effects of the worsening garbage crisis in this mountain resort city as the city government is still undecided on what measure to adapt to end the impasse.

This scenario developed after the city council rejected the request of the city mayor to allocate P50 million to fund continuous hauling of garbage to the sanitary landfill in Capas, Tarlac up to the end of this year because of insufficient basis.

However, the council approved P2.1 million for hauling of stockpiled garbage at the Irisan transfer station to prevent the open dumpsite from being barricaded by irate residents in the nearby villages of Baguio and Tuba, Benguet who are suffering from the obnoxious odor of the stocked garbage.

The city government’s problem is compounded by the fact there is still no definite plans for the establishment of its long overdue sanitary landfill in Sto. Tomas Apugan village because of increasing number of claimants over the city-owned lot which will be used as a sanitary landfil.

Worst, the possible sites of the landfill in Aringay and Tubao towns in La Union have also no definite direction as local residents in both municipalities have expressed their opposition to the environmentally critical project because it allegedly poses a serious threat to the health of the people and the state of the environment in the said areas.

After publicly admitting the local government is abandoning the planned construction of the sanitary landfill because it seems the project has no definite direction, Mayor Reinaldo A. Bautista Jr. claimed he was reportedly misquoted since what he meant was the city will seriously consider all possible options for the realization of the project.

Officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources are now already fed up over the continuous failure of the city government to comply with its repeated commitment to set up its sanitary landfill in order to solve the worsening garbage problem in the city.

At the same time, tourism industry stakeholders here disclosed a remarkable decrease in tourist arrivals in the city over the past several months because of the city’s failure to solve the garbage problem which is repeatedly being televised and printed thereby forcing prospective tourists to change plans in coming here.

This city is one of the highly urbanized cities nationwide that has not yet complied with the provisions of Republic Act (RA) 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act mandating all local governments to close the operation of their open dumpsites and establish their own or clustered controlled dump facilities or engineered sanitary landfill.