How about a landfill, Mayor Archival?

Cebu City, many years ago, owned a garbage dumpsite. If I remember it correctly, it was located in Barangay Inayawan. For reasons of its reported failure to meet health and environmental standards, it was closed. If I further recall it accurately, it was Honorable City Councilor Joel Garganera who initiated the legal action that doomed the dumpsite. I have not read the decision myself as it did not concern me personally, but the lesson from such court action introduced me to the glaring difference of a garbage dump on one hand from a land fill on the other hand. Conversely, therefore it can also be said that Cebu City, in all its prominence, never owned any sanitary land fill.

There is an area in Barangay Binaliw, this city, which people call as landfill. But, in my information, it is not owned by the city government. It is privately owned and it is safe to conclude that it must have been established for profit. What is it that I heard that as a business enterprise, it accepts not only the garbage from Cebu City but from individuals and other local government units, as well. Oh yes, we can say that Cebu City has become a dumping ground of Mandaue City’s waste.

Also many years ago, Atty. Ronald Duterte, then Cebu City mayor, invited me to his resort on a hill high up in Barangay Babag. While we were having coffee, Mayor Duterte pointed to me a site, somewhere in the lowlands, a place which he claimed to be ideal for the establishment of a sanitary landfill. In his soft voice, he visualized it to be quite unlike the then existing Inayawan garbage dumping area.

Why ideal? The location, according to Dr. Duterte (he was a Doctor in Civil Law), was central. If we should look at a Cebu City map we can discern the respective distances from barrio to barrio. In fact, the Duterte envisioned sanitary landfill would about four barangays namely Barangays Kalunasan and Guadalupe of the South District and Barangays Lahug and Busay of the North District. To him garbage collection and disposal must be efficient. I could not fully comprehend the lawyer-mayor decades ago. But then I came to accept his logic when I saw garbage trucks, marked with names of barangays in the south district, going to Binaliw, a barangay on the northernmost boundary of the city, to transport waste. To dramatize this point, is it not safer and sanitary for a Barangay Pardo garbage truck to deliver garbage to a land fill facility located at the back of Guadalupe than transport it to Binaliw?

In my example above, how many trips can a Pardo garbage truck negotiate to Guadalupe daily? Both barangays are part of the city South District. And how many trips can it do going to faraway Binaliw, belonging to the North District? The impact of such many trips first on the wellbeing of the garbage collection personnel, second on the trucks and heavy equipment used and third on the traffic of the city is right away discernible. When I tried doing my math, I recognized the wisdom in the idea of Mayor Duterte to establish a land fill facility in the area he pointed to me many years ago.

Modesty aside, I wrote the ordinance establishing the city’s system of garbage collection in 1988 yet or about thirty-five years ago. It was some sort of a codification of all previous ordinances on the subject. I remember my colleagues deliberating on the measure for many months. When it was finally approved, it became the product of the collective minds of real public servants, of councilors more brilliant than me. Honestly though, I did not textually connect that ordinance to environment because the latter was less an issue then as it is hotlines pursued at present. Anyway, after my term as councilor, I continued to write as I have written about this subject a number of times in this column. Somehow, its importance was, probably, not in the priority list of past administrations and that is why Cebu City does not have any landfill. I am bringing this topic up again because the mayor-elect, Engr. Nestor Archival is a reputed environmentalist. Who knows he shares the wisdom of the late Mayor Ronald Duterte.