One day, while I was going to my small garden plot located near the boundary of the mountain barangays of Mabini and Paril, traffic was slowed down. It was unusual because we do not have traffic jams in the mountains. But, that day vehicular movement was so slow that it seemed almost grinding to a halt. I noticed that were few garbage trucks running quite slowly and I concluded that they apparently caused the traffic buildup. I was riding my multicab. Ahead of me were two private cars that also looked like they were being driven very lazily. Then, quite suddenly the window of the car immediately in front of me was rolled down and someone puked through the opening. I thought that the people inside the car were affected by the foul odor coming from the slow and lumbering garbage trucks.
The trucks were on their way to deliver garbage to a landfill in Binaliw, a barangay in Cebu City’s mountains. Those foul odor-emitting vehicles came from Mandaue City as the markings indicated. In other words, our city was (and still is) the depositary of the refuse from Mandaue. To make Mandaue City clean and sanitary, they collect their garbage thoroughly and simply dump it in Cebu City! It is as simple as that.
Here is one more datum. When Romy Penalosa, a friend of mine, and I were cruising the mountains last week also, we saw garbage trucks marked Compostela going to the direction of the Binaliw landfill. After a quick exchange of thoughts, we surmised that Compostela likewise sends its waste to Cebu City.
Earlier on though, owing to the fact that the Inayawan dumpsite was ordered closed after Cebu City failed to meet the minimum standards for a sanitary landfill, the city government entered into a contract for the hauling of our waste to such a distant place as Pinamungajan! Never mind that the private contracting party was friendly to the then city’s big boss, the reasoning that was offered to justify the millions of pesos spent for the project was to rid our city of our ever increasing daily volume of trash. Again, the theory is simple. To clean our city, we collect our garbage and dump it in Pinamungajan.
That we lost our garbage dump area upon legal orders was downplayed. It had to be overlooked because it would not be good for the political careers of our leaders to discuss it. Now, if the publicized health reason for hauling our waste to a distant place was true, why would we allow the garbage of neighboring LGUs to be deposited in our city? If it is difficult to understand this logic, let us just assign it the word “anomaly” because it really looks like it.
In fine, we need a sanitary landfill. Cebu City has to have one. There are all good reasons for our leaders to adopt this project. That is my reason for writing again about it in this column. To be truthful, I have written few articles in the past, on the necessity for the city to build its own landfill but I must admit that until this point in time, no one among our distinguished leaders is willing to take up the cudgel. If I sound repetitive, it’s because there is no more beneficial project than having a sanitary landfill. Is it not that, according to an aphorism, “constant dripping of water wears away the stone”?