THE management of the property where the transfer station of Cebu City government is located assured that the operations in the area will soon normalize.
Allan Rodriguez, Evo Enviro Solutions, Inc. managing head, said that this would happen soon especially since the city government already had a new garbage hauler, Pasajero Motors Corp. (Pamocor), to bring the garbage piled up at the transfer station to a privately owned landfill in Consolacion town in northern Cebu.
Evo Enviro Solutions, Inc. owns and manages the property used as the city’s transfer station.
Rodriguez gave the assurance after complaints of the stench of garbage piling up in the transfer station instead of it being moved to a landfill caused an investigation of the Environmental Management Bureau in Central Visayas (EMB-7).
In an inspection report, the EMB-7 pointed out that Evo was only granted an environmental compliance certificate (ECC) for a “waste management project” and not for a landfill.
Four ECC conditions were also violated by Evo including failing to implement mitigation measures, operating without permits like hazardous wastes and discharge permits, failing to submit semi-annual compliance monitoring reports and for using the facility outside of its intended purpose.
The EMB-7 is set to issue a notice to violation to Evo and will be scheduling a technical conference with them.
Rodriguez said they have not received an official copy of the document but assured that they will be cooperating with the EMB-7.
“We haven’t known about it (EMB inspection report) yet, only through the media. But we are very willing to talk with EMB to discuss our violations,” he said.
He said that together with Pamocor, they are already removing all of the piled up garbage in the transfer station.
He said Pamocor may already haul out all of the garbage in two to three weeks, and the situation inside the facility may already normalize by then.
He said that the reason the garbage piled up in their transfer station and caused a stench in the area over the past weeks was the granting of City Hall officials’ request to allow the city’s and barangays’ garbage trucks to continue dumping inside the facility during the two weeks where the city would have no private hauler.
“There were around two weeks when the city had no private hauler. For us, we also don’t want that the entire city will smell bad due to uncollected garbage. So on our side, we were doing a goodwill thing for the city,” he said.
He added that some City Hall officials like Department of Public Services (DPS) head Roberto Cabarrubias, DPS assistant head John Paul Gelasque and the mayor’s executive assistant Francisco “Bimbo” Fernandez requested Evo to allow them to continue dumping in their facility.
Rodriguez recalled that the city’s contract with their previous garbage hauler Jomara Konstruckt Corp. ended sometime in the middle of May.
Then their new hauler Pasajero Motors Corp. (Pamocor) was only able to start hauling the city’s garbage to a private landfill in the first week of June.
“We accommodated their request. For around 15 days, the garbage in the transfer station was not hauled. The city generates 500 to 600 tons of garbage a day, times 15, that’s almost 9,000 tons for the two weeks,” Rodriguez said.
The piled up garbage in the transfer station immediately caught the attention of Cebu City Councilor Joel Garganera who, after inspecting the area, described it as a “mini landfill” instead of a transfer station which is required to only hold garbage for a maximum of 24 hours.
It was Garganera who requested the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) 7 to inspect the area since he has been receiving several complaints from people about the “mismanagement” and the stench from the transfer station.