Cimatu hails plan to allow Oro city dump to be shared with towns

By JIGGER J. JERUSALEM
Correspondent

ENVIRONMENT Secretary Roy Cimatu welcomed city hall’s plan to allow towns in Misamis Oriental and other neighboring provinces to use its sanitary landfill, too, for a fee.

“I discussed with Mayor Oscar Moreno with this plan of letting municipalities use the sanitary landfill for a fee, of course, so the city will earn,” Cimatu told reporters during his visit here on Thursday.

This move, he said, could help nearby local governments that still have not complied with Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, in the proper disposal of their garbage.

He said RA 9003 was enacted in 2000, but almost 20 years have passed “and yet some municipalities are still not compliant.”

Based on the 2015 data from the Commission on Elections, there are 1,490 municipalities and 144 cities in the country.

Of this, Cimatu said only 10 to 15 percent of the municipalities have complied with the provision of the RA 9003 to construct their own sanitary landfill.

He said the high cost of putting up and maintaining a sanitary landfill is the main factor why municipal governments have yet to build their garbage disposal facilities.

Cimatu said he has already instructed the regional offices of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to assist towns in coming up with the solution to this problem.

“My instruction to the DENR is, instead of putting the blame on the [local government units], you can help them come up with a sanitary landfill,” he said.

“We don’t have to follow the standard sanitary landfill as it will hundreds of millions of pesos. Municipalities that don’t earn much cannot just afford to build it,” he added.

Cagayan de Oro closed its 17-hectare dumpsite in Barangay Carmen in 2016 after the Office of the Ombudsman threatened to file legal action against local officials for non-compliance of RA 9003.

The following year, the city government formally opened its sanitary landfill in Barangay Pagalungan.

With the closure of the dumpsite, Moreno decided to develop it into an eco-park complete with amenities such as gardens, trails, and other facilities. It is expected to be opened to the public by 2022.