A sanctuary and a landfill

When former Cebu City councilor Pastor “Jun” Alcover and Congressman Fidel Nograles of Rizal spoke recently of the urgency to establish evacuation centers for use in times of calamities, they both gave vigor to my otherwise discordant voice. I have long been writing about the need to erect a sanctuary. My idea of shelter is for a more expansive refuge for people in case of such natural disasters as earthquakes fires, floods, tsunamis, and typhoons, as well as calamities arising out of human conflicts like terrorism and nuclear warfare. Alcover and Nograles’ espousal and thought do vary in magnitude and scope but they are obviously similar in concept.

Eerie silence met my previous write-ups. No one gave the sanctuary concept a second thought. It probably meant nothing to our brilliant officials. In fact, when I wrote in this column a story about an asteroid, labeled by scientists as TC 3, that exploded high above a desert in Sudan, and where the sanctuary could be useful if there was impact, a friend of mine called me an alarmist kind of a “prepper”. The push provided by Alcover and Nograles encouraged me to continue in my supposed wild imagination. Their support gave meat to my kind of meandering.

While I will not stop hammering on the importance of the “sanctuary”, I will also keep writing on my other suggestion to the leadership of the city to establish a sanitary landfill. We city residents produce about 1,000 tons of garbage every day yet the city owns no facility where to put it. I understand that we appropriate a huge amount of our taxes to transport our refuse to places outside of the city and pay a still-larger sum as tipping fee for every truckload of garbage.

Our city leaders owe it to us and the succeeding generations to establish a sanitary landfill of its own. Cebu City must have one. The place must be centrally located as to be accessible to both the north and south districts. There is such a place waiting to be developed. Where?

One day, many years ago, former mayor Ronald Duterte (may his soul rest in peace) invited me to a cup of coffee in his upland resort somewhere in Barangay Babag. On the veranda that overlooked his rose garden, we had a fantastic view of the city. But, our attention was riveted to an elevation much lower than his resort although it was (it, still, is) flanked on its sides by rising mountains. The higher portions could be graded in a terrace-like formation and planted with a miscellany of centennial year-trees like Mabolo and Molave and fragrant smelling plants like Ilang-ilang. When its lowermost part is leveled, the flattened area can serve as the depositary of residual waste. What we saw as remarkable was that on such a valley, the edges of the north and south districts almost met. When access roads to both districts are constructed, the travel time of garbage trucks will be so reduced that the wear and tear can be minimized and more importantly the turnaround of such vehicles can be fast, resulting in more efficient garbage collection.

In my previous articles, I mentioned that the landfill of Bayawan City, Negros Oriental, accordingly designed, for a song, by a German UN Environment consultant married to a Bayawan City resident, is world-class. When I codified the ordinances of that city, I visited the 21-hectare land fill which is expected to answer the needs of the city in the next 25 years. I took my lunch beside a building for human waste without my noticing any kind of smell. Our officials are brilliant personalities that they can build a sanitary landfill better than that of Bayawan, but visiting that Negros Oriental city to learn what is good for Cebu City will not be a junket!