By the time you will be reading this column, our city government may have already stopped hauling our garbage to an engineered sanitary landfill in Tarlac, and as a result, we could expect our garbage to pile up in Baguio’s 128 barangays.
While Baguio City braces for more visitors during the summer season, the city government is in a quandary with the City Council vetoing an earlier order from Mayor Mauricio Domogan for the hauling of garbage.
The city’s contract with the garbage hauler, Camilo Trucking Services, ended last week or more specifically on March 9.
We may recall that when Domogan reassumed as city mayor in 2010, garbage hauling and tipping fees combined amounted to over P4,000 per ton, but these costs were cut to less than P2,000 per ton today, and with no other alternative available, this makes him want to continue with the operation.
The hauling of Baguio’s garbage started when the Irisan dumpsite was phased out after collapsing in a trash-slide several years ago.
Though expensive, hauling was identified by the Environment Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources as an acceptable means of disposal for areas which can afford the service, but which are still without any engineered sanitary landfill.
The act of hauling out of garbage is now an acceptable means to dispose of waste and can fill the requirements to be compliant with the implementation of Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.
The hauling of garbage is being bid out regularly with the last bidding carried out last February 10 when only Camilo Trucking Services submitted interest to haul out garbage to Capas, Tarlac.
Domogan told the City Council that they should not be suspicious that the Camilo Trucking Services is being favored by his office and is being given undue advantage over other bidders.
He asked the legislators to return an appropriation of P75 million placed under Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses to the Environment and Sanitary Services in the city budget to be able to continue the hauling out of trash.
This was after the City Council limited money disbursed for garbage hauling and tipping fees to only P9 million for the first two months of this year, which alarmed Domogan for a possible “no garbage collection” scenario.
He explained to them that it appears that other bidders cannot comply with one of the requirements of their terms of reference wherein all bidders must have their own transfer area with a permit from the EMB-DENR.
He said that there was an instance when GA Flores submitted the lowest bid for the hauling, but was unable to present a valid transfer area for the garbage, showing only a lot situated in a residential area in Camp 7 which was deemed not feasible.
In order to compel residents to help in solving the city’s garbage problem, the city government mandated households to segregate their trash at source to help in significantly reducing the volume being hauled out of the city and to lessen the government’s expenses on waste hauling.
Further, the city government purchased two Environmental Recycling System machines that were used to convert some 48 tons of biodegradable waste to compost fertilizer and such machines are still operational to date, contrary to allegations by his critics that the multi-million peso units of equipment are no longer operational.
The city government is ready to sell the treated compost fertilizer to interested buyers considering that a machine was additionally installed to remove the plastic s that were included in the compost fertilizer produced by the ERS machines.
For the past six years, our city government was able to purchase 12 brand new dump trucks and two compactors in order to improve the collection of garbage in different barangays and to prevent garbage from being scattered in streets that would put the city in a bad light again.
Because of the active participation of local residents in the segregation of garbage at source and in the operation of the ERS coupled with the recycling of materials by waste segregators, the volume of garbage being hauled out of the city dropped to 130 tons per day and is still going down, while the hauling cost was also significantly reduced to P1,432 per ton, assuring that more efforts are being done to eventually abandon hauling.
The volume of garbage being hauled out of the city is about 160 to 200 tons daily, including the 48 tons of biodegradable waste being processed by the ERS machines.
Earlier, Benguet Corporation entered into an agreement with the local government units of Baguio City and Itogon in Benguet, as well as with Goldrich Natural Resources Exploration and Development to develop its Antamok properties into an ESL with waste-to-energy and composting facilities aimed for sustainable environmental preservation and protection.
The question now is, what direction will our city government take, with our chief executive and our local aldermen in a “Mexican standoff” on what should be done to solve our beloved city’s garbage problem?
For me, we should continue cooperating by segregating our garbage at source and making our own household compost pits to lessen our trash. This would definitely help a lot if everybody in Baguio did it.
I would agree with your statement that we should continue cooperating by segregating our garbage, but with regards to having each household have their own compost pits would seem to be not possible for all. We know that Baguio City is becoming congested, not all household would be able to allot a space for such. Maybe asking the Baranggay to obtain a compost pit area for their constituents would be more feasible?