The Dumaguete City government is thinking of buying biological enzymes and brown sugar to hasten the decomposition of garbage and neutralize the stench while the search for a potential site for a sanitary landfill continues.
Mayor Felipe Antonio Remollo has tasked the Technical Working Group chaired by Councilor Manuel Arbon and co-chaired by Dr. Jorge Emmanuel to come up with the specifications that will serve as the standard in the purchase of the biological enzyme.
City Agriculturist Wiliam Ablong, who is also a member of the TWG, said that the biological enzymes is expected to pulverize the tons of garbage collected from different barangays and brought daily to the city dumpsite resulting into organic fertilizer as by-product.
Furthermore, spraying the garbage with the biological enzymes has been tested and proven effective to remove bad smell, treat polluted leachate and produce more organic fertilizer to improve farm productivity, food security while promoting health and general welfare.
Meanwhile, the local government unit of Dumaguete City, the capital of Negros Oriental, has started visiting potential sites for a sanitary landfill in Valencia, Sibulan and Bacong.
The TWG visited a property in San Antonio in Sibulan, Malaunay in Valencia and Suludpan in Bacong.
Mayor Remollo announced Friday that the city government is doing its best to find the best possible solution to the garbage problem in Dumaguete.
He disclosed that apart from a sanitary landfill, another approach is being eyed, involving a foreign individual who has intimated to introduce technology that would recycle garbage into cement blocks and other construction materials.
Remollo also announced that even the municipality of Amlan has offered a potential site for the sanitary landfill.
On social acceptability that apparently has slowed down the proposed project in Valencia, the Dumaguete mayor stressed the need to educate the people about sanitary landfill, noting that when talking about garbage, what comes to mind immediately is the open dumpsite in Candauay, Dumaguete City.
He suggested taking residents in the potential sites on a tour to the sanitary landfill in Bayawan City in south Negros Oriental so they can understand and be oriented about it.
Another possibility that Mayor Remollo is eyeing is to have smaller sanitary landfills, perhaps one that will cater to Dumaguete barangays in the south and another for the barangays in the north.
The Dumaguete mayor promised that by the end of the year, his administration would have found the most suitable site for a sanitary landfill and by the time his term is over, the current open dumpsite would have been closed for good. (MetroPost/with a report from Judy Flores Partlow)