Baguio ERS machines still operational

ENVIRONMENT MONITOR

BAGUIO CITY  – The city general services office belied insinuations by critics of the present administration that the two multi-million Environmental Recycling System (ERS) machines lodged in Irisan are not operational, saying that such unverified allegations are false, baseless and prejudicial to the interest of the city.

          City General Services Officer Romeo D. Concio said one of the ERS machines is undergoing preventive maintenance because of a reported leak in its boiler, thus, only one of the machines is continuously processing the city’s biodegradable waste into compost fertilizer.

            “The ERS machines had been operational since it was purchased by the city government and it is not true that the machines are already junked and inoperative. WE do not know why the issue on the ERS machines are being dragged during elections when such machines had been operational through the years,” Concio stressed.

            The two ERS machines are supposed to convert a combined 48 tons of the city’s biodegradable waste to roughly 8 tons of compost fertilizer per machine everyday.

            Concio added the city government is set to sell the available compost fertilizer to a Quezon City-based company, Raport Inovations, which is a supplier of organic fertilizer of the agriculture department, by next month using the dealer’s permit.

            It was learned that the supplier is set to buy some 5 to 10 tons of compost fertilizer per day and re-process the same for their clients.

            According to him, the ERS machines had been steadily operating and constantly converting the city’s generated biodegradable waste into compost fertilizer which had been stored within the closed Irisan dumpsite area and ready for disposition to interested buyers of organic fertilizer.

            Concio said the company is currently negotiating with the agriculture department the purchase of a huge volume of organic fertilizer from the city’s ERS machines so that it could be used in the practice of organic agriculture in the different parts of Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog.

            The city government purchased the two ERS machines to ease garbage disposal problem after notice from the national government on the closure of the city’s Irisan dumpsite pursuant to the provisions of Republic Act (RA) 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.

            Aside from the conversion of a portion of the city’s biodegradable waste into compost fertilizer, the segregation of waste at source and the taking of recyclable materials by segregators, the city government was constrained to embrace the hauling of its residual waste to the engineered sanitary landfill in Tarlac as a temporary solution to prevent the repeat of the scattering of garbage all over the city while identifying the long-term solutions to the problem, particularly the establishment of the Integrated Solid Waste Disposal Facility in Sto. Tomas School Area or in the new offered site in the open pit area of the Benguet Corporation in Ampucao, Itogon, Benguet.-- Dexter A. See