Much better than the Binaliw sore thumb

Almost every early Saturday morning, I visit my very small garden in Sitio Baugo, Barangay Paril, this city. My garden plot is about 20 kilometers away from home. The trip going there on my almost-dilapidated multicab is, at times, rather tiresome. But, when I see the faces of “bagat” whatever weariness the travel brings me just becomes inconsequential. Bagat, literally meaning time meet, is the term used in the mountains to refer to a person looking for work. Whenever I go to Paril about 15 bagats ask me for a one-day job.

The other Saturday while piling up the rocks on my property’s side of the creek, the bagats talked about the landfill in Binaliw, perhaps just about five kilometers away. It appeared some of them were at the garbage disposal facility while dump trucks marked with names of barangays in Mandaue City unloaded their waste there. Since I really did not know if the dumpsite was accessible to the public, I chose to keep my mouth shut and just listened to their lively banter. To my amazement, my Saturday workers, some barely in their early twenties, might not possess high education, but their thoughts revealed a deeper understanding of Cebu City’s problem of solid waste disposal.

To me, the Binaliw landfill is a sore thumb sticking out of Cebu City, if I were to corrupt this idiom popularized by Earle Stanley Gardner. Imagine that Cebu City has, in effect, become the dumping ground of Mandaue City’s garbage. Who knows this privately-owned landfill will expand its operations to accommodate waste coming from such other local government unit as Consolacion, itself a bourgeoning city? This is not difficult to imagine because a wide concrete road links Poblacion, Consolacion, and its Barangay Kabangahan and Cebu City’s Binaliw is just two villages away from Kabangahan. I know this geography because I also own a very small piece of land in Barangay Pit-os, that adjoins Kabangahan. Should Cebu City become the dumping ground of waste coming from other local government units, our city might as well change the label “Queen City of the South” to “Garbage Dump Site City of the South” with the tragedy highlighted by the fact that our own waste is brought to a faraway municipality.

Cebu City is certainly not without means to develop a world-class sanitary landfill something better than what Bayawan City, Negros Oriental, has which is the best among those that I have seen so far. With its vast resources, our city can tap brilliant Cebuano minds and use the kind of technology designed to clear our environment and restore its healthy condition of many years ago.

There is an ideal place for such a project. The area is nestled in the valley bound by Kalunasan, Babag, Guadalupe, Busay, and Lahug. It is almost in the middle of the north and south districts of the city. This site was shown to me, decades ago, by then Mayor Ronald Duterte. Its central location will make the travel of garbage trucks shorter and therefore there can be more trips done. Even in its higher elevation, seepage to the city is effectively blocked both by its mountainsides and appropriate technology. If abundant vegetation is nurtured, the facility can even become a tourist destination of sorts.

I believe that Mayor Edgar with his bunch of technocrats and selected geniuses from the private sector might very well visit the site suggested by Mayor Duterte and explore the latter’s mind. Who knows, with Labella’s pro-active mentality and development consciousness, the city can finally establish a solid waste disposal facility that will be much better than the sore thumb sticking from the bosom of Barangay Binaliw.