City Hall firm in closing down Inayawan landfill

In this Aug. 13, 2012 photo, scavengers are still at the Inayawan landfill sorting the trash to make money even after the Cebu City government stopped the dumping of wastes and all other activities at the facility in December 2011.
(CDN FILE PHOTO)

The Cebu City government is pushing through with the total closure of the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill by January 15.

With this, Mayor Michael Rama issued an order informing all barangays, city hall department heads and the police about the closure.

“This order is preparatory to the long term goal of this administration to close down, rehabilitate, remediate and convert the area constituting the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill into a productive, healthy, habitable and sustainable zone for economic development,” read the mayor’s order.

He said it is in compliance with the provisions of Republic Act (RA) 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, RA 9275 or the Philippine Clean Water Act of 2004 and RA 8749 or the Philippine Clean Air Act of 1999.

Rama ordered all public officials concerned to practice segregation of solid wastes in their respective offices and homes.

He also ordered the Cebu City Environmental Sanitation and Enforcement Team (Ceset) to strictly enforce the anti-littering and the no segregation, no collection policy with the assistance of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO), barangay tanods and the barangay environment officers (BEOs).

“Barangays shall fully operate their material recovery facilities (if any) to assure that only residual wastes are delivered to the sanitary landfill at Polog, Consolacion and other sanitary landfills authorized by the DENR,” the order further read.

In the past years, the Inayawan landfill has served as a transfer station of the garbage collected by the barangays especially in the south district.

With the order and the closure, no more activity will be made in the facility except from those operating a plastic to fuel facility by Mansei inside the area.

Cebu City’s Solid Waste Management Board (SWMB) is eyeing a mobile transferring scheme among south district barangays.

“We’re still finalizing how we will do it. But with this scheme barangay garbage trucks will be collecting the garbage in their respective areas and directly transfer the collected garbage to bigger trucks owned by the city,” said SWMB head Jade Ponce.

It will now be the bigger, city-owned trucks that will dump the garbage to the Consolacion landfill. The city currently has five ten-wheeler trucks available.

He said this scheme is advantageous since barangay garbage trucks will then have a longer turnaround time to collect trash in their areas.

Ponce said the ultimate goal for the Inayawan landfill area is for it to become a mixed-use commercial area.

An unsolicited Public-Private Partnership (PPP) proposal from a Korean company is currently being reviewed by the city government.

The project, which is estimated to cost around P3 billion, will involve the rehabilitation of the area. This will be at no cost to the city.