With writ, upland town acts better on waste

BAGUIO CITY—Fixing a decades-old waste problem won’t be easy for an upland town in Mountain Province that was slapped with a writ of “kalikasan” on Oct. 17 because neighboring Kalinga province believed the dump had been polluting the Chico River.

Bontoc Mayor Pascual Sacgaca said the town’s reliance on an old dump that stands 100 meters from the river was a “necessity rather than utter neglect or willful violation” of environmental laws.

“The [town’s] geographic situation makes it hard to pinpoint a suitable site for its sanitary landfill. The [town] is surrounded by mountains and the only flat lands are those privately owned rice fields which are beside the Chico River,” Sacgaca said in a letter to the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Sunday.

He said efforts to improve Bontoc’s waste management began in 2008 when the community volunteered to clean up the river banks and when the town government introduced waste segregation techniques and other activities aimed at changing local behavior about trash.

Sacgaca said the town also informed the Court of Appeals that it has asked the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) for assistance in getting waste processing machines.

In September, the town asked Julius Caesar Sicat, DOST Cordillera director, for help in acquiring a machine that processes plastic and Styrofoam wastes, and a bioreactor for the town’s biodegradable wastes.

The Kalinga Anti-Pollution Action Group (Kapag), a group of people’s organizations and Kalinga officials that has been protesting Chico river pollution, filed the lawsuit this year.

Bontoc officials said Kalinga and the court appeared to have accepted “the mistaken premise that the [town] and other communities [have been] dumping their garbage in the Chico River.”

“Why was the municipality of Bontoc singled out as the main pollutant of the Chico River? It is unreasonable to solely blame the respondent municipality, where the real pollution could be coming from other communities not impleaded [in the suit],” Sacgaca said in the letter.

He cited communities downstream of the Chico River which are also compelled to comply with Republic Act No. 9003 (Ecological Waste Management Act of 2000).

The river starts from Mt. Data in Mountain Province, traversing the towns of Bauko, Sabangan and Bontoc there, as well as communities in the Kalinga towns of Tinglayan and Pasil and the capital Tabuk City.

Sacgaca said the dump exists because of a 2007 arrangement between the local government and the Lasilas clan. “Concrete barriers at the foot of the dump prevent the garbage from spilling over to the banks of the river,” he said.

“Garbage collection is undertaken by the municipality every day … Only nonbiodegradable wastes, whether recyclable or nonrecyclable, are collected by the garbage truck. Biodegradable wastes are disposed of by the households themselves. Metal containers have been installed in the town proper where the nonbiodegradable wastes are brought out and stored. Junk shop owners operating in the town proper serve as sorting centers for recyclable wastes,” Sacgaca said.

He said the town established a solid waste management board in 2004, which developed a waste management plan covering 2004 to 2013. In 2007, the local government undertook an information drive, and in in 2008, it repaired and improved the dump, he said. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon