BAGUIO CITY – The City Council directed the City Solid Waste Management Board to first review and evaluate all solid waste management proposals being submitted to the city government and submit to the local legislative body the appropriate technologies that are in accordance with the city’s solid waste management system that would be the most feasible for implementation.
The Council reasoned out allowing the council to listen to the numerous solid waste management proposals submitted by different companies every regular session would simply waste the time of the local legislative body in looking into the feasibility of the proposed systems which is supposed to be the responsibility of the city’s solid waste management board.
Last Monday, the City Council referred to the City Solid Waste Management Board a proposal submitted by Renewable Power Connect (RPConnect), a German company, that proposed for the adoption of a waste-to-energy technology in order to solve the city’s solid waste disposal problem and guarantee a profit sharing on the income to be generated once the power generation will be operational.
Under RPConnect’s proposal, the city government is obliged to provide 1 2-hectare land area that will be rented by the company for the operation of the modular power plants using the thermolisis technology so that for every 100 metric tons of garbage, it will be able to produce at least 10 megawatts.
While the Council saw the proposal to be feasible, they discovered that there will be no technology transfer after the expiration of the 25-year agreement which runs counter to the existing terms of reference that there should be a transfer of technology to the local government after the lapse of the contract period.
Councilor Peter Fianza volunteered to craft the appropriate resolution prescribing the guidelines on how the City Council will deal with whatever solid waste management proposals that will be submitted to the local legislative body for consideration so that all proposals will not pass through extensive deliberations that will end up wasting the precious time of the council members.
Being the city’s technical committee empowered to review, assess and evaluate the city’s solid waste concerns, Fianza cited it is still best for the board to screen the numerous pending proposals pursuant to the existing system of the local government before submitting to the Council what would be the most feasible and applicable technology that will be adopted to permanently solve the city’s solid waste disposal problems.
At present, the city government has only embarked on the operation of the two Environmental Recycling System (ERS) machines that convert the city’s biodegradable waste into compost fertilizer while the recyclable wastes are being taken by the segregators and the residual wastes are the ones hauled out of the city to the engineered sanitary landfill in Capas, Tarlac.
Fianza argued the city government must consider whether or not the city can afford the technology, whether or not it conforms with the city’s existing system, whether or not the proposed technology will be feasible to the city and whether or not there will be the required transfer of technology after the phase of the desired period of implementation. by Dexter A. See
