How many of you have seen the Dumaguete Landfill? It is easy to think that once the truck comes to collect your trash it disappears forever. But Tropical Storm Sendong sent a wake-up call to everyone living downstream: Your trash is back!
In fact, it never went away. Before the storm, the Dumaguete Landfill (alias Gene V. Duran Sr. Environmental & Ecological Park) was quickly approaching capacity. Using bulldozers to stack and compress what could not be picked out for recycling, waste was piled six meters high, over an area of 1.5 hectares. Nearly 90,000 cubic meters of trash. And because the dumpsite was never sealed, all waste seeped directly into the soil and bordering Banica River.
City government recognizes that the current situation is unsustainable. In fact, since 1997, the city of Dumaguete has been slowly working to improve its waste treatment, from what used to be ‘two smoking mountains’ of unsorted, polluting waste. The award winning Ecological Park demonstrated that garbage could be sealed over with greenery (though that did not address seepage). The old park even included a giant aviary where two birds became many after years of successful breeding.
Unfortunately, Storm Sendong erased nearly all of that progress. “Fifteen years of work was washed away in two hours. Today, we are starting over,” says Site Director, Alfredo de los Santos. Damages are estimated at 1.6 million pesos, more than half of the landfill’s annual operating budget. Really, the only thing that survived were the three bulldozers (too heavy) and the neighborhoods directly behind the landfill, protected by the wall of trash that not even Sendong could completely erase.
So, what do we do now that we are starting over? Could this be an opportunity to truly address the issue of waste management? Local environmental activists, such as FENOR (Friends of the Environment of Negros Oriental) say “yes”! Alfredo de los Santos dreams of the day Dumaguete Landfill becomes a “zero waste” operation.
Foundation University is currently researching the technology that would work best for Dumaguete. There are existing systems in Hawaii and other islands that may be replicable here. Foundation’s goal is to install a low-maintenance waste conversion system that can safely process the city’s waste, converting it into fuel (both biodiesel and charcoal) that can be resold to finance ongoing operations.
Foundation University’s intentions are threefold:
To provide engineering students hands-on experience with waste to fuel conversion, and to demonstrate to the overall student population that garbage can be valuable when utilized.
To stop garbage from drifting into the Banica River, upstream of the University and town of Dumaguete.
To act on the mission of Foundation, to serve its local community and be a leader for other municipalities to learn from and replicate, thereby initiating an island-wide behavior shift towards waste. Because we care, we share.
Foundation University plans to incubate the project for the first five years, beginning with construction of a proven waste-conversion system on-site of the current city dump. Foundation staff and students would operate the machinery for the first few years, testing, maintaining and forming new markets for the by-product. Once the System has demonstrated value, consistent production and sustainability, Foundation will transfer ownership to the City of Dumaguete for perpetuity.
Leaders of Dumaguete and environmental advocates, please join us now in your support of the University’s efforts to make the most out of the destruction of Sendong by starting anew and practicing real waste management. And if you have any advice or information regarding waste treatment and funding resources, please notify: amy.villanueva@foundationu.com. Let us never again have to see the Banica River dirtied with our own refuse. (Amy Ellingson-Villanueva)
