DENR junks proposed sanitary landfill in Bohol

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has rejected the proposed P75.2-million sanitary landfill project in Bohol province.

Acting Environment Secretary Joemari Gerochi said that even if the best-laid engineering plans were adopted in the proposed landfill in Barangay Dampas in Tagbilaran City, these would not prevent leachate from penetrating the city’s source of drinking water.

Gerochi did not issue an environmental compliance certificate (ECC) for the proposed Tagbilaran Sanitary Landfill Project (TSLP), one of the projects under the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG)’s $30-million Philippine Regional Municipal Development Project.

It was the second time that an application for the landfill was junked by the DENR.

The DILG project is being funded by Australian Aid and intends to put up viable sanitary landfill sites in Bohol and in the cities of General Santos in South Cotabato, Legazpi in Albay and Puerto Princesa in Palawan.

Of the four, only the landfill project in Puerto Princesa has so far been issued an ECC by the DENR.

In a letter to the DILG dated Feb. 13, Gerochi said the landfill site in Tagbilaran is "unsuitable... because of the presence of sinkholes or underground natural crevices."

"This inherent limitation is unsuitable for a landfill. The proposed extra engineering designs and construction measures, while considered expensive, do not assure that these limitations can be overcome," Gerochi said.

Based on the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIS) of the Tagbilaran Landfill Project, the TLSP would process some 500,000 cubic meters of waste for 20 years.

The project would service around 12,500 households in 15 barangays, as well as 17 medium and large factories and 3,641 commercial establishments consisting mostly of stores and offices.

In May last year, then Environment Secretary Antonio Cerilles rejected the project’s application for an ECC following the discovery of "shallow aquifers" and the proponent’s failure to address the risks posed by the area’s geologic conditions.

Gerochi said that a geological study conducted by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) in Central Visayas showed that almost all of Tagbilaran City and its outlying towns sit on a limestone layer characterized by the presence of small and large sinkholes.

This, the study said, made the entire area highly permeable and porous "and therefore unsuitable for landfills."

The same GMB study said that the area’s "high solubility due to chemical reaction might cause considerable contamination of ground water."

"The ground water flow within the aquifer must also be taken into consideration to determine the fate of the leachate which might contribute to the possible contamination of ground water downslope of the site," it said.

Nolan Francisco, head of the Presidential Task Force on Solid Waste Management, said that this development should push the Tagbilaran local government to double its effort to educate residents on waste segregation as an alternative solution.

"They could easily reduce their garbage volume by 50 percent, which could be converted into compost, and another 40 percent of recyclable materials. This approach would leave them with only 10 percent of their garbage which they can export to a sanitary landfill located outside their province," Francisco said.

Under the recently enacted "Solid Waste Management Act," local government units (LGUs) have only until 2004 to build their own landfill or upgrade their open dumps into sanitary ones.