Mathay: Reopen Payatas dumpsite

Hit left and right by critics for alleged failure to solve the smelly garbage crisis in Quezon City, Mayor Ismael Mathay Jr. is asking President Estrada to allow the reopening of a portion of the Payatas dumpsite as a "transfer station."

Mathay said he is considering the use of a vacant lot in the four-hectare City Hall complex for that purpose, if only to speed up the collection of the city’s daily garbage output, which amount to about 2,000 tons.

"This is only in the short-term," he told reporters. "The proposed transfer station in Payatas will be located at the lower portion of the former dumpsite, which is away from the houses of residents." The mayor made the request Tuesday in a letter to Mr. Estrada.

He said he has been forced to make the proposal because residents have clamored for the shutdown of an existing transfer station near Kamuning Road.

The President closed down the 15-hectare Payatas dumpsite after a 100-foot wall of compacted garbage tumbled over a sleeping urban poor community at its foot last July 10, killing at least 234 people and injuring scores of others. Around 80 people are still missing.

The tragedy highlighted the growing urban poor problem in the city, which has close to a million homeless people. What observers said was the worst man-made disaster to hit the metropolis in years has proved to be a big legal hurdle for the city, which now faces, along with the Metro Manila Development Authority and other entities, a landmark P1-billion damage suit filed in the Quezon City regional trial court by survivors.

Mathay said the transfer station is needed because most of the garbage collection trucks hired by the city cannot make the long haul to the San Mateo landfill, which has been temporarily opened to accommodate the trash generated by the city’s 2.2 million residents.

The transfer station will be a clearing house where garbage can first be sorted before being unloaded by garbage trucks onto bigger garbage haulers, he said. The mayor said typhoon Seniang has made the situation more difficult because heavy rains it unleashed brought down the San Mateo bridge, forcing the garbage trucks to make a 10-kilometer detour. – Romel Bagares