After landfill closure, what now?

The Supreme Court ruling on the Inayawan landfill should spur Cebu City Hall to find ways to find a permanent alternative site where they can dump the city’s garbage and not have to pay hundreds of millions of pesos to have it dumped someplace.

It’s not just about affirming a Court of Appeals ruling that granted a Writ of Kalikasan and ordered the permanent closure of the Inayawan landfill. It also upheld the appellate court’s order for a complete rehabilitation of the landfill site, something that should have been done 13 years ago.

To his credit Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña and his allies at the Cebu City Council pushed for building a new landfill site at Barangay Binaliw but this was voted down by the Barug Team Rama bloc who said this would pose a serious threat to the health of residents there.

If a landfill site isn’t possible within Cebu City, then what would the opposition bloc propose to solve the garbage problem? They are supposed to hold a press conference today and they may drop a suggestion or two.

At the very least, household awareness and implementation of the waste segregation program is supposed to be 40 percent as claimed by the City Environment and Natural Resources Office. How they came out with this figure nobody knows.

Maybe the City Council opposition can be bothered to independently verify this claim or not since election season doesn’t start until late this year or early next year.

Since the administration considers building a new landfill site prohibitive and maybe even impractical, Cebu City residents hope that garbage disposal costs would go down with the waste segregation program which they should actively implement not only for their own sakes but for their children.

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A statement by City Environment and Natural Resources Office chief Ma. Nida Cabrera about a pre-feasibility study by a Singapore-based firm for Cebu City’s solid waste management program should shed some light on where the future of the city’s waste disposal efforts will head off to.

Not one word had come out of the provincial government on its plans to build a landfill site somewhere in the province which the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) regional office said is a more expedient solution to Metro Cebu’s garbage problems, specifically Cebu City.

The city’s garbage problem fell off the radar for sometime since public attention was diverted to the monster traffic congestion caused by the Natalio Bacalso underpass project and the declining water supply.

But once the rains start falling and the floodwaters reek of uncollected garbage making their way into and out of the canals and into the streets, people will again notice and complain. And by that time, we may echo Cabrera’s prayer that “God be with us.”