BAGUIO CITY – The City General Services Office (GSO) and the City Engineering Office (CEO) are currently conducting a dry run on the operation of the chute that was constructed within the city’s temporary waste transfer station to allow the local government to comply with the no touch ground policy imposed on the hauling of the residual waste outside the city.
City General Services Officer Eugene Buyucan pointed out that the dry run of the chute will determine the extent of works that will be done by the CEO to make the same fully operational round the clock to ensure the strict adherence of the city to the prescribed no touch ground policy considering that it has been over a year now since the condition was imposed by the Cordillera office of the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB-CAR).
Earlier, the local government earmarked some P11.5 million for the construction of the chute and the concreting of the ground in the 5,000-square meter waste transfer station to allow the city to comply with the conditions imposed by the regulating agency specifically the no touch ground policy for the continuous use of the facility as its temporary waste transfer station.
However, the completed chute has not yet been used because of reported defects on its construction that paved the way for the CEO to make the necessary remedies and will be the subject of a dry run to facilitate the institution of the necessary corrective measures to make the same fully operational.
With the existence of the chute, garbage trucks of the city will dump the garbage to the chute from an elevated portion of the facility while the trucks of the hauler will be waiting for the garbage that will go down the chute so that no garbage will be allowed to touch the ground considering the foul odor emanating from the transfer station, especially when garbage pile up in the area.
Among the conditions imposed by the EMB-CAR in allowing the use of the area in the Baguio Dairy Farm as the temporary waste transfer station of the city is that no garbage should be left in the facility for over 24 hours aside from the need for the local government to institute the necessary measures that will prevent foul odor from being produced by the garbage that will be left on the ground.
While the local government is still locating for a permanent site where it could put up its proposed integrated solid waste disposal facility which will be a combination of the conventional and state-of-the-art modes in disposing generated waste in the city, the hauling of the residual waste from the temporary transfer station to the sanitary landfill in Urdaneta City, Pangasinan remains the available doable option to prevent the occurrence of garbage disposal problem.
Buyucan appealed to residents to continue adhering to the segregation of waste at source so that they will be able to help in reducing the volume of waste being hauled out of the city daily and lessen the expenses incurred by the city in commissioning the services of a private hauler to haul out the city’s residual waste to the accredited sanitary landfill in Urdaneta City which has been the arrangement for over a decade now.
By Dexter A. See
