INAYAWAN LANDFILL (CDN FILE PHOTO)
CEBU City Mayor Tomas Osmeña is bent on using the Inayawan landfill for the city’s garbage despite complaints against the worsening stench coming from the facility.
The mayor met with stakeholders mostly locators in the South Road Properties (SRP), heads of government agencies and City Hall department heads on Sunday morning for a dialogue.
Osmeña explained that he doesn’t want the city to go back to dumping its wastes in the private landfill in Consolacion town.
“It’s grossly anomalous. We are paying P280,000 a day for the Consolacion landfill and that’s just the tipping fee. Aside from that, there’s no contract between the city and them. It is a grossly anomalous situation,” he said.
He said the city and the barangays don’t have enough vehicles to bring their collected garbage all the way to Consolacion.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) through the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) 7 recently wrote a letter to Osmeña informing the city of the 13 violations being committed by the continued operation of the landfill.
But Osmeña said if the DENR will force the city to close the landfill, he will still not go to Consolacion and threatened to just dump the garbage in the SRP.
“If they will not allow us to dump it in Inayawan, I will dump it (the garbage) in SRP. I will just call it uncollected garbage. My alternative is to leave it in the streets of Cebu City, but I’m not going to do that. There are more people in the city’s streets than in SRP,” the mayor said.
Osmeña said though that the city is already reviewing different plans in an effort to prolong the use of the landfill and minimize its problems.
These plans include building a high retaining wall, reaching five to six floors high, which will extend the landfill’s use for 10 more years, he said. There are also proposals to develop a waste to energy program in the facility.
Former city councilor Nida Cabrera, a consultant in the Cebu City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CCENRO), said during the meeting that they have already started addressing the several violations cited by the DENR.
She added that they will be informing the DENR about the city’s efforts and plans on the violations cited against them.