BAGUIO CITY – The city government is putting out safeguards that are directed at households that use chemicals to dissolve garbage or have resorted to burning trash, in the aftermath of the garbage crisis here.

At a news conference, Vice Mayor Daniel Fariñas on Thursday said some firms had started peddling new systems for treating garbage directly to barangays because their proposals had been ignored by the City Hall.

He said the city council would issue guidelines as to what environmentally-sound measures to take in disposing of trash.

Fariñas, who is acting mayor, emerged from a closed-door executive-legislative session where officials agreed to hold Monday caucuses on garbage to speed up legislation on the garbage issue.

The environmental cost of the garbage crisis is on top of their agenda, he said.

The government had just been told about the failure of a bidding process for truckers who would be contracted to haul Baguio trash to a commercial landfill in Tarlac.

The failure does not affect existing short-term contracts with local truckers, Fariñas said. But it calls attention to the huge expense of shipping out garbage, which now costs P30 million since July.

On July 14, residents of Barangay Irisan and neighboring Tuba town barricaded Baguio’s only dump, which has not been contained because of its girth and now endangers communities there.

Fariñas said the city government had allocated up to P100 million for disposing of trash as well as buying lands so it could develop an environmental landfill.

But time has grown short, he said, because officials have been bogged down with negotiations for Benguet properties that may no longer be feasible.

“We decided to meet every Monday to thresh out issues, so when the city council meets in the afternoon, we can start the legislative process to solve the crisis,” he said.

He said he had directed City Hall officials to submit on Monday a terminal report on all options being pursued to solve the garbage crisis.

He said among the reports he is anticipating is an inventory of technical proposals sent to the city’s environment office that have not been addressed.

“I have seen it for myself. There are [communities] that have started using technologies that we did not approve. It did not reach us [in the city council] at all,” he said.

While lauding the communities’ initiatives, he said the city government wants to ensure that the independent responses to the crisis “do no destroy our planet because of our ignorance.”