City and barangay officials toured the Bacolod City Sanitary Landfill in Brgy. Felisa late last week to check its preparedness for commissioning on April 16 and the need for segregation of wastes at source, a press release from City Hall said.

Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia, led 15 barangay captains and 18 kagawads with Liga ng Mga Barangay president and Councilor Mona Dia Jardin and City Administrator Rogelio Baloin in the inspection.

They found the landfill ready for commissioning, the press release said.

Leonardia said “I am glad that our city will soon be able to finally comply with the sanitary landfill requirement of RA 9003 or the Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, and Bacolod will be one of the few cities at present to do so”.

He said pushing for this project was not easy for Vice Mayor Jude Thaddeus Sayson and himself, as well as for all those who supported it, because their political detractors went all out to derail it.

He said these people went to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the House of Representatives, and the Ombudsman, to work against it to no avail because all their complaints were junked, he said.

COMPLAINT JUNKED

A particular complaint of overpricing that was filed by rabid oppositors of the landfill was junked by the Ombudsman because the Leonardia administration was able to prove that the land acquisition price was lower compared to land fair market values then prevailing in far-flung areas of other cities in Negros Occidental, such as Talisay, Bago and Kabankalan, the press release pointed out.

Leonardia said the sanitary landfill is at its present location because a technical study conducted by a qualified Department of Environment and Natural Resource personnel justified it, and the Environmental Management Bureau of DENR Region 6 issued the prerequisite Environmental Compliance Certificate. This laid to rest the opposition’s lie that the landfill is a threat to BACIWA water wells, he added.

INNOVATIVE FINANCING

He also said the cost of the construction amounted to some P32 million and it was financed in an innovative way—from the proceeds of multi-year installment reimbursements by the National Government of Internal Revenue Allotment underpayments, which the Development Bank of the Philippines advanced in form of a term loan, instead of an outright discounting, which would be more expensive in terms of cost of money.

The barangay captains and kagawads were brought to the sanitary landfill site as part of the information and education campaign aimed at getting their all-out support for waste segregation and reduction, the release said.

SEGREGATION POLICY

The inspectors saw that the sanitary landfill is just designed to take in residual wastes, that is portion of wastes that exclude the recyclables and the compostables requiring the need therefore for the barangays to really observe waste segregation, it added.

Jardin said the “no segregation, no collection” policy shall really be implemented effective April 16, the day of the commissioning of the sanitary landfill.

Adjacent to the sanitary landfill is a materials recovery facility where wastes segregated at source will be further processed for recovery of recyclables and composting of biodgradables, the release said.

Leonardia and Sayson said theyare both hopeful that the privatization of garbage collection complementing the sanitary landfill and MRF will pave the way for the enhanced compliance by Bacolod City with RA 9003.*

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