When land pollution begets air pollution

Posted on November 17, 2007 - Filed Under |

SEVEN years after the effectivity of Republic Act 9003 or the “Philippine Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the lead agency for the gargantuan task of seeing to it that all local government units already have sanitary landfills or at the very least, controlled dumps, is just barely starting to move the asses of LGUs.

RA 9003 specifically provides : “No open dumps shall be established and operated, nor any practice or disposal of solid waste by any person, including LGUs, which constitutes the use of open dumps for solid waste, be allowed after the effectivity of the Act; Provided, that within three (3) years after the effectivity of the Act, every LGU shall convert its open dumps into controlled dumps; Provided, further, that no controlled dumps shall be allowed five (5) years following effectivity of the Act.”

That to date, almost all LGUs in Pangasinan and especially the city of Dagupan do not even have controlled dumpsites to speak of – seven years after the Act’s effectivity – is a testament to the slow, very slow, — perhaps even cavalier – treatment of the law by governmen agencies and units concerned with its implementation.

The Community Environment and Natural Resources Officer of Dagupan himself, Samuel Songcuan, has dubbed Dagupan’s dumps as an “open dumpsite” till today. Making matters worse is the fact that the open dumpsite is now overflowing and by the DENR’s own assessment, can no longer accommodate more garbage.

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Hopefully, the DENR can knock some sense into the heads of LGUs to really go cleaner environment and start at least turning their open dumpsite to controlled dumpsites. Sanitary landfills are the most ideal but expensive and we doubt if any municipality can afford to spare a big chunk of its budget and internal revenue allotments for such a construction.

Frankly, I am quite disturbed at the way things are moving in this dumpsite control thing with DENR as the lead. It’s heartening to note, per a news report, that the agency is calling for a waste management summit in Pangasinan to “discuss and propose solutions” to the worsening problem of garbage. But we do have some pointed observation on that.

All these years since the Act’s effectivity and it’s only about to do the consultations? I mean, it’s not as if DENR learned only belatedly that there was a problem, or is it?

A sumit of the magnitude the DENR is now calling costs oddles of money. Whether it comes from DENR’s budget or from the LGUs’ maters less. It’s still money that could otherwise be channeled to more important pursuits.

There’s been too much talk — conferences, summits, meetings — on garbage and similar environmental concrns over the past many years that the aggregate saliva used or expended in these fora has already aggravated air pollution to begin with.

If truth be told, there’s nothing an expensive summit or conference can accomplsih or gather by way of stakeholders suggestions and ideas that a simple wrtten report asked of the LGUs — with proper guidance from DENR –cannot achieve at the least possible cost.

Unless, of course as often happens, the agencies are out to consume their savings by year-end with these expensive exercises or risk having the excess money reverted to the general fund.

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