Blame our officials for floods, garbage

President Bongbong Marcos thinks we’re all litterbugs. He asks why we can’t be like Japanese youngsters who pocket candy wrappers till they get home to put in waste bins.

Actually many of us Filipinos are neatniks. We do bring home trash for proper disposal. We segregate and compost.

But what happens after that? The government louses up garbage collection.

Observe those garbage collectors – government hirelings. They unload our trash bins onto open stinking trucks. They tear open the garbage bags and mix together what we carefully segregated: plastics, paper, cardboard. They even accept careless neighbors’ kitchen waste and rotten food which should’ve been shredded and flushed onto home septic tanks.

Worse follows thereafter. Rubbish trucks speed on highways, stench and flying scraps and all. Everything’s dumped onto open sites, bulldozed and let to pile up dozens of feet high.

Officials never learned from the Payatas-Quezon City dump disaster of July 2000. Consecutive typhoons caused the unstable pile of trash 130 feet high – 13 building floors – to collapse, killing 300 scavengers and shanty residents and leaving 300 more missing.

It happened again in Baguio city in August 2011. The decommissioned Irisan dump collapsed onto homes along Asin Road below, killing six and destroying scores of dwellings.

And twice more this year. Jan. 8: Cebu city’s Binaliw landfill caved in, killing 36 workers, injuring 18 and dozens missing. Feb. 20: Rodriguez, Rizal landfill gave way, from which only one scavenger’s body was retrieved, although eyewitnesses said as many as 50 were trapped underneath tons of garbage.

Not to forget, a month-long fire raged last April in Navotas Sanitary Landfill, spreading noxious fumes in Metro Manila and Bulacan, in breach of the 1999 Clean Air Act.

On Aug. 10-14, monsoon rains and high tide pushed 750 tons of garbage – 200 truckloads – onto Redemptorist Water Channel in Baclaran, Parañaque.

The artificial white sand beach along Manila’s famed sunset boulevard also caused floods in the capital. The dolomite sand regularly accumulates massive amounts of drifting trash, clogging up drains.

That dolomite beach is the fault of Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources. It ignored findings that dolomite dust harms the eyes, lungs and skin. It didn’t study the environmental impact of the fake beachfront on Manila Bay. It paid a contractor P654 million to extract and pulverize dolomite rocks from seaside Alcoy, Cebu. Its Mines and Geosciences Bureau issued ore transport permits without requisite Alcoy municipal permit and public consultation.

Yet President Rody Duterte on Aug. 26, 2021 praised the monstrosity: “Dolomite is beautiful to the eyes.”

That encapsulated the issue of floods, garbage and environmental ruin. Politicos and bureaucrats allowed it.

Five years later, last Aug. 12, BBM contrasted Filipinos with Japanese kids. National and local politicos and bureaucrats mimicked him, blaming floods and garbage on us citizens.

They must reread the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000. Salient features of that RA 9003:

• Purpose: Manage solid waste, prioritize waste reduction, protect public health and nature;

• Key provisions: Segregation at source, that is, households, institutions and commercial establishments must separate garbage into biodegradable, recyclable, non-recyclable/residual and special hazardous waste; 3Rs approach or reduce, reuse, recycle; focus on minimising waste, composting organic materials; barangays or clusters of them must build materials recovery facilities for sorting;

• Local governments tasked with direct collection, sorting and structural execution of solid waste programs, including formulating a mandatory 10-year local waste management plan;

• National Solid Waste Management Commission to oversee programs, set guidelines and unify local strategies;

• NSWMC to be chaired by DENR secretary (presently Juan Miguel Cuna, with vice chairman Crispian Lao and executive director Maria Delia Valdez).

Sixteen prohibited acts, including:

• Littering, throwing waste matters (including pet poo) in public places such as roads, sidewalks, canals, esteros or parks and establishments, or causing or permitting the same;

• Undertaking activities or operating, collecting or transporting equipment in violation of sanitation operation and other requirements or permits, P300-P1,000 fine or one-15 days community service;

• Unsanitary collecting and trucking; open burning of solid waste; causing or permitting the collection of non-segregated or unsorted wastes; take note: city/municipal mayors and barangay officials;

• Squatting in open dumps and landfills; open dumping, burying of biodegradable or nonbiodegradable materials in flood-prone areas, P1,000-P3,000 or one-half to six months imprisonment;

• Mixing of source-separated recyclable materials with other solid waste in any vehicle, box, container or receptacle used in solid waste collection; improper operation of open dumps; manufacture, distribution or use of non-environmentally acceptable packaging materials, P500,000;

• Importing toxic wastes misrepresented as “recyclable” or “with recyclable content,” P10,000-P200,000, plus imprisonment of 30 days to three years;

• Constructing of any establishment within 200 meters from open dumps, controlled dumps or sanitary landfill; and constructing or operating of landfills or any waste disposal facility on any aquifer, groundwater reservoir or watershed area and or any portions thereof, P100,000-P1 million, plus one to six years in prison.

In December 2008 the Supreme Court ordered national and local officials to keep Manila Bay clean. The 1977 Environment Code or PD 1152 obligates them to do so.

Covered agencies: DENR, DILG, PNP Maritime Group, Coast Guard, DBM, DepEd, DOH, DA, DPWH, MWSS, LWUA, PPA, MMDA.

Local governments: Bataan, Pampanga, Bulacan, Tarlac, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal and 17 Metro Manila cities.

Officials, politicos and bureaucrats must also beware. We Filipinos want them to answer for the P1.7-trillion flood control scam, 2016-present, which killed family members and destroyed our homes, farms, orchards, shops, vehicles, furniture, clothes, even memorabilia.