5-hectare Dagupan dump shut down for rehab

CLEANUP The Dagupan City dump at Barangay Bonuan Binloc is due to undergo further improvements. —Dagupan City Public Information Office/CONTRIBUTOR

DAGUPAN CITY—The 60-year-old garbage dump here was shut down on Thursday as the local government began rehabilitating it following a closure order from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

Mayor Brian Lim said the DENR had given the city government six months to haul the dump’s residual wastes to a sanitary landfill.

Open dumps banned

“This administration is serious in rehabilitating the [dump],” he said in a statement.

Republic Act No. 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, bans open dumps in the country.

Lim said the DENR had ordered the city government in 2017 to stop operating the dump at Barangay Bonuan Boquig but the previous administration defied the order and continued to operate it.

The mayor, who met with DENR regional officials last month, said his administration would comply with the department’s rehabilitation and closure plan for the 5-hectare open dump.

“We want to do it because from the start, our goal is to be able to rehabilitate and close the [dump],” Lim said.

Maria Dorica Naz-Hipe, Environmental Management Bureau director in the Ilocos Region, said the city government will find a third party to transfer the garbage to a sanitary landfill within the six-month deadline.

Natural drainageLim said the dump’s rehabilitation would include removing makeshift structures in the area, preventing water from accumulating and promoting natural drainage.

He said the dump will also be covered with soil to prevent water from getting into the waste pile during the rehabilitation.

Teddy Villamil, the city government’s waste management consultant, said they would operate a materials recovery facility inside the dump for waste recycling and composting. —YOLANDA SOTELO