In March 2023, I submitted an article to the MetroPost alerting the public in the town of La Libertad to the LGU’s plan to establish a sanitary landfill in barangay San Jose. At the same time my brother and I contacted the Dumaguete DENR office to ask for details behind the planned project. Interested readers can obtain the details regarding the project and the relevant background in my previous article titled “On this I’d like to be proven wrong” (MetroPost, March 19, 2023)
Subsequent to our efforts in early 2023, DENR did send personnel to inspect the site, and to understand the background behind the planned project. The DENR office in Cebu issued a long and detailed report soon thereafter.For reference the report is ECC-OL-R07-2023-0090: Proposed Sanitary Landfill
In a nutshell, DENR, through this report, assured the public that numerous steps were going to be taken to ensure any and all my concerns would be addressed.
An important point in this report was that a system of tanks would be built to process the waste and toxic liquids from the garbage so these would not leak into the large river nearby, the spring that the local people source their drinking water from, that none of this would affect the aquifer.
As the site was intended only for residual waste, there would be no smell emanating from the site, we were assured.
The report was impressive in the level of detail it went into to ensure a safe, clean, aesthetically pleasant landfill.The writers of this report should have received a reward for scientific journalistic excellence.
Fast forward to January this year, I can only conclude that all that was just smoke and mirrors to keep property owners appeased, to keep the local residents from banding together and complaining to the authorities. But, oh wait, complaining to the authorities would just put them in their bulls eye. Kuyaw!
The local authorities have indeed opened a dumpsite in sitio Canlaro, barangay San Jose in the southern town of La Libertad. It is a dumpsite pure and simple, not a sanitary landfill which DENR repeatedly pointed out to me and my brother that it would be. Po-tay-to. Po-ta-to.
Call it what you like, not one single requirement in DENR’s ECC report has been implemented.
There are no Ponds and Lagoons: the Leachate Treatment Facility, a raised viewing station, Landscaping to include a perimeter fence, buffer strips, water supply tank, among other things.
The designated dumpsite now has garbage flung on to the ground, the pile growing in height and breadth.
Animals help themselves, flies abound, the smell which is carried from the hills to the lower grounds is enough to make you want to puke, and in a heavy rain, plastic bags containing who knows what pull away from the growing pile, and follow the flowing water down to people’s yards, farms and walkways.
So now, what was a generally clean land is garbage strewn. And, to top it all, syringes and needles are just thrown on to the pile the way one would with insignificant and inconsequential garbage.
My brother and I, together with a visitor from Canada, drove from the farm back to Dumaguete with a vehicle riddled with pesky black flies. A first!
DENR, where is your oversight on a project you approved, despite our repeated expressions of concern? Is this how it is in the Philippines now? Public officials gleefully receiving their monthly salaries and benefits, putting their names on impressive reports, but colluding nonetheless with public officials who they should be auditing, and requiring the law be followed?
If we, the common tao, do not speak up nor engage in non-violent revolt, then we deserve our fate.
Mine is a lonely voice in what could soon be a doomed society, unfortunately.
Diana Banogon-Bugeya (She/Her)