Valencia LGU to purchase lot for sanitary landfill site

CEBU, Philippines - With or without Dumaguete City and the towns of Sibulan or Bacong, the Valencia municipal government will proceed with plans to acquire a piece of land intended for the sanitary landfill.

Cooperation meetings and initial talks were earlier conducted with Dumaguete City Mayor Felipe Antonio Remollo for a supposedly joint undertaking for the landfill, but Valencia town Mayor Edgar Teves said the former had some options to consider first like the offer of Vista Green to construct for free a gasification power plant at the garabge dumpsite at Barangay Candau-ay in Dumaguete.

In lieu of this development, Teves said Valencia town will instead proceed with buying either the 5-hectare lot at lower Malaunay or the 20-hectare lot going to Barangay Dobdob, as the site of the town’s sanitary landfill. Dumaguete can join the project later, said Teves.

Funding sources will come from yearly appropriations from municipal funds, according to Teves in saying it would be economically viable for the municipality because the rest of the local government units will already have a dumping area for their garbage but for a fee.

DENR had earlier warned defiant LGUs for poor and non-implementation of the garbage law after more than 15 years since it became a law in the year 2000.

Teves quoted DENR Assistant Secretary Juan Miguel Cuna who said “closure of all open dumps, or their conversion to sanitary landfill as mandated by law, is among the top priorities of the agency this year.”

 There are about 400 open dumpsites in different parts of the country that have been ordered closed, including the garbage dumpsite in Dumaguete, while the office of the Ombudsman is set to investigate LGU officials for the continued use of open dump sites in their respective jurisdictions.

Reports have it that complaints were filed against mayors, vice mayors, and councilors all over the country for alleged failure to implement provisions of Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000. (FREEMAN)