by Sentinel Times June 22, 2019 Lucena City Mayor Roderick ‘Dondon’ Alcala (Photo ...
June 22, 2019
|
| Lucena City Mayor Roderick ‘Dondon’ Alcala (Photo from PIO Lucena) |
LUCENA CITY - For more than 2 decades, the city has struggled with a huge headache of a waste problem with the daily accumulation of various kinds of waste matters ending up in a huge mountain of open dumpsite in Bgy. Mayao Kanluran.
But 2 years ago, beginning in Jan. 2017, the city government under mayor Roderick Alcala tapped the general service office under Rosalina Castillo, to start implementing for good a real waste management program in conformity with Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.
“The huge accumulation of mountain of garbage daily has been the normal sight that would greet anyone in the open dumpsite in Bgy. Mayao Kanluran. It has been such for many years so much so that it has become our own version of Payatas in the city,” Castillo told Sentinel Times in Tagalog in an exclusive interview on Monday, June 17, in her office at the New City Government Complex here.
Payatas was a huge open dumpsite in Quezon city that killed 218 people in a landslide on July 10, 2000 which led to the passage of RA 9003. It has been converted to a ‘controlled disposal facility’ in 2004, closed in 2010 and in 2011 started to operate as ‘sanitary landfill’.
Castillo accompanied this writer to what used to be an open dumpsite in Bgy. Mayao Kanluran which now operates as a waste disposal facility or sanitary landfill of the city’s 33 barangays.
She pointed to the construction of a children’s playground and Ecopark near the entrance of the 8 hectares waste disposal facility, the establishment of the Materials Recovery Facility which processes plastic wastes for the production of decorative bricks used in pathways and gardens in various schools and various establishments in the barangays of the city.
Aside from the MRF, the sanitary landfill facility has been installed with gas vents to let off steam of the garbage buried underground and there is leacheate collection pond to avoid spillage of liquid wastes to nearby areas. Two payloaders, a grader, backhoe, a bulldozer and a steamroller are among the heavy equipment used in the sanitary landfill.
Some 55 to 55 tons of garbage are daily accumulated in the city and these are transported to the sanitary landfill site byk 6 dump trucks every morning. Castillo said they are targeting about 30% reduction from waste segregation at the household level.
Among the barangays with own garbage trucks to transport their daily wastes to the sanitary landfill are Gulang-Gulang, Iba. Iyam, Bgy. 5, Iba. Dupay and Market View.
Vincent Gabia, head of the Landfill site, said it was in 2016 that they have started to develop the open dumpsite into a sanitary landfill led by Castillo. He explained how the various wastes of the city are disposed in their waste facility.
“Pagpasok ng trucks ng basura ididiretso sa MRF para isegregate ng mga tao tapos dadalhin sa landfill site na may nakalaang hukay para sa basura at yan ay tatabunan ng lupa, level by level up to level 10 bago stop na para di masyado mataas ang tabon.”
According to Gabia, there are about 50 scavengers daily in the dumpsite where the garbage trucks daily unload waste matters from all around the city.
He said scavengers are grouped into 2: Bisaya which number over a 100 and Tagalogs with over 80 members and work on separate days to insure income for everybody and avoid conflict. Gabia said that in some days most of them earn as much as P800 to P1,000 a day sorting out every available wastes before they bring them to sell to the junkshop just outside the landfill site.
The scavengers are also members of a cooperative called Lucena City Eco-Aides Cooperative which has served them for 3 yrs. already. Mayor Alcala said the city government is making a headway in dealing with its solid waste problems with the establishment of its own sanitary landfill that is organized, with own personnel and has a cooperative for scavengers which can be compared to other local government units in Calabarzon region.
No comments