CITY OF SAN FERNANDO?The Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) on Wednesday rejected a proposed open dump on Aeta land that Pampanga Governor Lilia Pineda ordered cleared for the use of Bacolor and towns in the district represented by ex-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in Congress.

The area that was cleared is covered by a certificate of ancestral domain title (CADT) issued by Ms Arroyo herself when she was still President.

Lormelyn Claudio, EMB director in Central Luzon, said an open dump is banned by law in the first place. Second, she said, environmental compliance certificates (ECC) are not issued to these types of dumps.

The planned open dump is in an upland village in Nabuklod, where many Aetas live.
The proponent, Floridablanca Mayor Eduardo Guerrero, has not applied for an ECC for the dump, which would sit on a 21-hectare lot covered by a CADT issued by Ms Arroyo last May.

Guerrero said the land is a foreclosed property that his son wants to buy from the Philippine National Bank.

Pineda entertained Guerrero?s plan after she saw mounds of garbage, including medical wastes, in several sites in the FVR Megadike in Bacolor, which was built to catch lahar.
She was supposed to have hired 19 Aetas to do the clearing.

Salong Sunggod, regional director of the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP), said the EMB and other bureaus of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources ?cannot issue permits for projects within ancestral domains unless indigenous people give their free prior and informed consent.?

Orlando Pineda, chief of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), said the agency has engineering, geohazard and geological assessment work on land in a different village, Pabanlag, not Nabuklod.

Orlando said the studies ?do not mean the MGB has approved whatever was planned on the site.?

?Proponents should go to the EMB,? Orlando told Inquirer.

Arturo Punzalan, environment officer of the Pampanga government, said Guerrero offered the site as a sanitary landfill.

He said the provincial government was checking with EMB if the proposed dump won?t violate any law.

Governor Pineda won?t reply to calls or text messages from Inquirer.

Rosve Henson, the governor?s chief of staff, said Mrs. Pineda has inspected the site and ordered the processing of papers needed to turn it into a dump.

Henson said the governor told local governments of the second district towns of Guagua, Lubao, Sasmuan, Sta. Rita, Porac and Floridablanca and the town of Bacolor to bring their wastes to the site next week.

?They can start dumping, provided there is an explicit clearance from EMB by that time,? said Henson.

Belly Cabeso, head of the solid waste management program, said the EMB was not expected to issue even a temporary permit for an open dump.

Pampanga has no sanitary landfill of its own. The City of San Fernando runs materials recovery facilities (MRF). Most of the towns rely on open dumps.

Angeles City throws its waste at the Metro Clark sanitary landfill near the Aeta village of Kalangitan in Capas, Tarlac.

?They can start dumping, provided there is an explicit clearance from EMB by that time?? Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon