‘Customs broke law in Canada waste’

This photo posted on the online petition on Change.org shows a container van full of hazardous waste that is being held by the Bureau of Custom in the Port of Manila. The petition urges the Canadian government to take back the shipment of 50 container vans full of waste. PHOTO/ CHANGE.ORG PETITION

ANGELES CITY—The dumping by the Bureau of Customs (BOC) of illegally shipped wastes from Canada to a sanitary landfill in Capas, Tarlac, had violated a resolution of the provincial board that allows the facility to accept only trash generated in the Philippines, a leader of a citizens’ group said.

Diana Figueroa, president of the Concerned Citizens of Bamban, cited the supposed violation of Resolution No. 108-2003 in a telephone interview on Sunday.

She said the resolution referred to the board’s decision “interposing no objections to the expansion of the established sanitary landfill in Sitio Kalangitan, Cutcut II, Capas, Tarlac, and to the use thereof by other cities and municipalities outside the province of Tarlac, including Metro Manila.”

The board issued the resolution in reply to a letter by former Environment Secretary Elisea Gozun that relayed the request of the National Solid Waste Management Commission to accommodate the wastes of other cities and towns.

The local governments of Capas, Bamban and Concepcion issued separate resolutions supporting the provincial board’s resolution, Figueroa said.

But Rufo Colayco, president and chief executive officer of the Metro Clark Waste Management Corp. (MCWMC), the firm that owns and operates the landfill, said neither the BOC nor his company violated the provincial board’s resolution because the document expressed “no objection” to the request of Gozun.

“The [Sangguniang Panlalawigan] cannot unilaterally impose conditions of projects [approved by the Clark Development Corp. or CDC], such as the landfill,” added Colayco, former president of the CDC and Bases Conversion and Development Authority.

Colayco said MCWMC did not violate its own environmental compliance certificate (ECC) because it agreed to bury only municipal solid wastes, as certified by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), in the facility.

MCWMC built the landfill in 2001 on 100 hectares of rolling hills at the

Subzone D of what is now the Clark Special Economic Zone (CSEZ), mainly for companies based at the Clark Freeport.

DENR issued ECC No. 0012-704-213 to the landfill as “final disposal of nonhazardous solid waste and which specifies no limits within the country for the waste collection area of the facility.”

In an interview on Sunday, Tarlac Gov. Victor Yap said it would be best for the provincial board to review the local laws or resolutions relevant to the landfill to clarify if there were any violations by MCWMC.

As of July 8, the contents of at least 29 of 50 containers held by the BOC at the Port of Manila since June 2013 and transferred early this year to the Subic Bay Freeport to ease congestion there had been buried at the MCWMC’s Kalangitan landfill.

The BOC had seized the containers after discovering that it contained trash, in violation of the Basel Convention and the Tariff Code of the Philippines.

Figueroa said the recent veto by Bamban Mayor Jose Antonio Feliciano of a municipal resolution banning the use of a road via Sitio Pagasa removed the prohibition on the transport of garbage to the landfill.

Capas Mayor Antonio Rodriguez closed a route in his town as he demanded MCWMC to pay taxes.

Zim, the owner of the containers, suspended hauling the trash from Subic Bay Freeport due to rain dumped by Typhoon “Falcon” (international name: Chanhom) last week. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon