REFORESTATION of the cleared area of the Bonuan dumpsite will kick off in June, in time for the rainy season, as proposed under the plan drawn up by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), which allocated 2,000 seedlings for the project.

Dagupan City Mayor Belen Fernandez announced this during another inspection of the dumpsite, where three backhoes and one pay loader are simultaneously working on the remaining mound of garbage that has accumulated since its opening 60 years ago.

These equipment load the dried wastes to six dump trucks, which then bring these to the sanitary landfill in Barangay Catablan, Urdaneta City.

Another dump truck unloads silt retrieved from the Calmay River, mixed with soil, in the already cleared area of the facility.

“We are set to level all the cleared areas preparatory to planting trees,” Fernandez said, assuring that the envisioned eco-tourism park will rise at the former dumpsite within her administration.

Fernandez said the city government is saving millions of pesos by bringing these wastes to the sanitary landfill using its own trucks, in contrast to the P1 million per day paid by the past Lim administration to a contractor that was reported to be bringing the wastes to a farmland in San Jacinto.

“We are now seeing great progress of work in the dumpsite,” the mayor said as she expressed confidence that the year-end target date of the facility’s closure could be met.

Closure of the dumpsite could have been made earlier had the seven majority councilors approved her request for a supplemental budget for the purchase of the needed equipment since the last few months of 2022. The fund was only approved in November 2024 when three opposition council members were slapped with a three-month preventive suspension by the Office of the President.

Fernandez, who had just won a fresh three-year mandate, said while the dumpsite is now effectively closed as no more garbage is being dumped there, she still sees the need to build a fence in the next few weeks to enclose the facility and ward off any intruders.

The segregated non-hazardous and non-recyclable residual wastes generated from the markets and homes are now being brought directly to the Holcim cement plant in Bulacan for use as fuel in the manufacture of cement, and as a cement component itself. (Leonardo Micua)

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