If need be, a daily air quality test and/or a weekly/monthly assessment of air quality in the areas surrounding the Inayawan landfill should be done to determine once and for all if it should continue to operate.
When Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña continued to reject calls for the closure of the Inayawan landfill site and threatened to transfer all the garbage to the South Road Properties (SRP), he was essentially telling every city resident that he won’t tolerate any questions or opposition to the continued operation of the landfill.
He continues to reiterate that the city should not pay to have its garbage transferred to a private landfill site in Consolacion town because the previous arrangement was anomalous and didn’t pass scrutiny in the City Council.
To recall, the reasoning adopted by the administration of former mayor Michael Rama was that the payment of tipping fee was of an emergency in nature and thus need not pass through the council for approval.
To be fair, the payment of tipping fees and the costs for maintenance of the trucks that would deliver the tons of garbage to the Consolacion landfill have mounted for months to the point that Cebu City owes the private landfill facility operator more than P20 million in tipping fees alone.
That said, one cannot argue with the fact and complaint of students, residents and businesses near the Inayawan landfill about the overpowering stench coming from the area.
Aside from offering cash to the students in response to a Facebook post showing them wearing surgical masks to avoid the landfill stench, the mayor had ordered that garbage composting systems be set up in five barangays to ease the volume of garbage entering into the landfill.
But what these incremental corrective measures have yet to address is again the overpowering stench coming from the landfill, the foul odor which is worsened and carried over by the winds that pass through the site.
And that, perhaps more than any allegations of corruption raised against the tipping fee deal with the Consolacion landfill site operator, is the bigger reason why the city government should find other viable options to transport the city’s garbage someplace else other than Inayawan or the Consolacion landfill site.
It had yet to be known if the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has the facilities to conduct air quality tests which are done to measure the livability of cities on a daily basis insofar as the Inayawan landfill site is concerned.
But those air quality tests, coupled with affidavits of the students and the Writ of Kalikasan being pursued by Councilor Joel Garganera, should form the basis for determining whether the landfill should be allowed to operate further or shut down permanently and another landfill site be developed for the city’s garbage.
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