DENR REVS UP HOPE

THE vision for a sensible waste management system in Pangasinan is not yet lost.

No less than the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has declared that the proposed multi-million peso sanitary landfill in Bayambang town could not be deemed a failure as the project has not yet started.

Speaking to newsmen, Samuel Songcuan, community environment and natural resources officer in Pangasinan, said, “Hindi pa nagsisimula ang landfill doon kaya hindi natin masasabi na failure (The landfill project there has yet to start so we can’t say that it is already a failure).”

The proposed landfill project, to utilize an initial 30-hectare land, will be put up by the private firm Waste Integrated Network System (WINS) headed by Abelardo Palad as president.

WINS owns the land on which the facility will rise and has several more plots which can be tapped as expansion area of the project

Songcuan said he is aware that the social acceptability of the project from the barangay, municipal and provincial levels went through legal processes and should not be affected by the change in leadership in the province following the May election.

The project was initiated during the last term of Governor Victor Agbayani with Leocadio de Vera, a defeated congressional candidate, as mayor of Bayambang.

Incumbent Bayambang Mayor Ricardo Camacho declared at the beginning of his three-year reign that he will not allow the putting up of a sanitary landfill in his town that will serve people from outside Bayambang.

Songcuan believes that the proposed sanitary landfill in Bayambang is already several steps ahead of a similar project that was proposed to be built in San Jacinto town by the city of Dagupan.

At the same time, Songcuan announced that the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office headed by Ms. Wendy Co is hosting an Ecological Solid Waste Summit in Dagupan in late November to discuss the worsening garbage problem in the 44 towns and four cities in the Pangasinan.

The summit, to be held in coordination with the Pangasinan provincial government and the city government of Dagupan, will be attended by local government representatives from every municipality.

Dagupan
landfill

Dagupan is facing ownership problems on the 30-hectare lot in barangay Awai, San Jacinto it bought for the setting up of a landfill.

Dagupan desperately needs a sanitary landfill as its open dumpsite in Bonuan, which it has been using since 1947, is now overflowing.

PENRO Wendy Co said the DENR gave Dagupan a 10-day ultimatum to submit the dumpsite’s closure rehabilitation plan as shown in a letter signed by Regional Executive Director Victor Ancheta addressed to Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr.

Co said the letter indicated that the garbage problem at the Dagupan dumpsite has already reached a critical level.

He said, however, that officials of the city, particularly Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez and Councilor Librada Reyna, chair of the committee on environment, have been actively coordinating with them to find solutions for the garbage problem.

“We are happy because some officials of Dagupan are now making initiatives to solve the garbage problem,” Co said.—LM

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments