San Mateo landfill seen as boon more than bane to municipality

MANILA, Philippines -The centerpiece of the 15-year development project of the local government of San Mateo, a first class municipality in Rizal, is a sanitary landfill which town officials brandish as a potential business asset rather than a long-term liability.

“It’s more of a boon than a bane,” San Mateo Mayor Jose Rafael Diaz told the Philippine Daily Inquirer referring to the sprawling 19-hectare integrated sanitary landfill on one of its hilly areas in Barangay Pintong Bukawe.

“I like to think it this way: In building a house, the first thing you must look for is the place for septic tank or toilet,” Diaz said in an interview at his office.

With more government officials from other cities paying a visit at the landfill, Diaz said in jest that San Mateo has become a tourist spot and the landfill has become their contribution to the “one town, one product” campaign.

San Mateo, a portion of which has remained watershed for water systems, including the Marikina river, is being developed into a suburban living place and an extension of the overly crowded cities in Metro Manila.

The landfill, Diaz said, would be a vital component of the development plan for San Mateo. “In a town looking for industrialization, real estate developers and companies would ask, where will we throw our garbage?” the mayor said justifying last week’s opening of the new landfill touted as high-tech and state-of-the-art.

“We are glad we have in place a sanitary landfill that complies with all environmental concerns,” he added.

The decision to allow the landfill to operate in the town was a “leap of faith,” Diaz said. “We were not sure what it would become. But we just believed it is for the better,” he said.

The municipality and the provincial government are entitled to a 25-percent share in the tipping fees that the operator will be collecting in processing the wastes.

Under the 15-year development project, which was conceptualized in 2009 after the city was hit by the tropical storm “Ondoy,” the local government is changing its comprehensive land use plan.

Portions of their land will be allotted to relocating universities and colleges, while other spaces are intended for industries and residential areas, according to Diaz.

The mayor, however, was quick to assure that protected areas of the town would be “forever untouched by development projects.” The disposable lands, on the other hand, will be maximized to its full potential, according to Diaz.

Another salient point of the project is the plan to construct the 12-kilometer San Mateo-Antipolo Toll Expressway. The expressway will start from Batasan Bridge and pass through the southern part of San Mateo up to Calawis of Antipolo City.

But opponents of the landfill’s presence in the town slammed the mayor’s pronouncements.

“What development was he talking about? This is a mere quick fix, leaving both the residents and the environment in jeopardy,” Noli Abinales, a San Mateo resident for 40 years and founder of the people’s organization Buklod Tao (A Community of People).

He said the landfill has been attracting only trash from other towns and cities, and never business investors and developers.

Buklod Tao, with other organizations such as developer Filinvest Land Inc., filed cases at the San Mateo Regional Trial court to stop the operation of the landfill, calling it an open dumpsite operating inside the buffer of the Marikina watershed.

Abinales claimed the untreated wastewater could seep into the water system.

“How come they were able to expand the operation of the landfill when (the dispute) is under litigation?” he said.

These claims were repeatedly disputed by the landfill operator and the local government, which said that the landfill lay outside the watershed and has been using an integrated system to reduce wastes.

Andy Santiago, San Mateo Landfill Development Corp. president, said even if the cases remained pending in the RTC of San Mateo, the court had not issued a temporary restraining order to stop them from operating.

He assured the public that the landfill’s operation was supported by an environmental compliance certificate, and was proven to be far from the watersheds.