Work on Clark landfill begins

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga — Work on a 100-hectare landfill in Barangay Kalangitan in Capas, Tarlac, still within the Clark special economic zone, will go full-blast starting Saturday, but officials said it will not be open to Metro Manila’s mounting garbage.

Red Fuentes, environmental management chief of the Clark Development Corp. (CDC), told The STAR that the project already has an environmental clearance certificate from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

Earlier, Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Heherson Alvarez, however, had identified the site and another in Morong, Bataan as alternative dumping grounds for Metro Manila’s garbage.

But Emmanuel Angeles, CDC president and chief executive officer, told reporters the other day that the landfill in Barangay Kalangitan would only accommodate wastes from the Clark ecozone and the rest of Central Luzon.

Fuentes said the 19 families, who live and farm in the Kalangitan area, have agreed to give way to the project. They are set to receive some P8.5 million in "disturbance fees."

"It’s all systems go starting Dec. 1," he said, adding that the landfill project, which the CDC board initially approved almost two years ago, is better referred to as "an integrated solid waste management project."

The project has been awarded to the German consortium Ingenieurburo Birkham and Heers and Brockstedt which has designed and built at least 35 similar projects across Europe.

The landfill will have an entrance station with weighbridge, segregation, recycling and composting facilities, final disposal facility, leachate storage ponds, a leachate treatment plant, a run-off water collection system, retention basins, landfill gas pump station with flare, landfill gas power plant, and environmental buffer and regreening zones.

Fuentes said only 60 to 70 hectares of the landfill area would accommodate wastes, and the rest would be for roads, the buffer zone and other facilities.

He said the landfill would not produce odor since it would have a collection system for methane gas which wastes produce. The wastes would also be fully compressed before they are dumped into the landfill, to prevent pest infestation.

Layers of soil and plastic in the landfill would also prevent leachate to seep underground, he added.

The project has a lifespan of about 25 years.

The German consortium would initially spend some P100 million for the landfill project. The amount would be deducted from the consortium’s dues to the CDC when it begins operating the landfill.