No end yet to row on road access to landfill

CLARK FREEPORT—The operator of a private sanitary landfill in Tarlac does not want to use a road in Capas town, where its facility is, even after the council of neighboring Bamban town banned trash haulers from using its alternative roads to the site due to the controversy over Canadian waste being dumped there.

“We won’t consider using the Capas road until the town has good governance,” Rufo Colayco, president and chief executive officer of the Metro Clark Waste Management Corp. (MCWMC), told the Inquirer.

Colayco was referring to demands made by Capas Mayor Antonio Rodriguez for MCWMC to pay the local government P1.6 million and to maintain an 8-kilometer earth road to the facility.

Open to trash haulers

Rodriguez on Saturday said the Capas route is open to trash haulers on condition that the demands were met.

The Capas’ monetary request is similar to what MCWMC paid to Mabalacat City, where its operations center in Clark is based.

Insisting that it does not owe any amount to Capas, Colayco said MCWMC prefers to access the landfill in Sitio Kalangitan in Barangay Cutcut II in Capas through the subvillages of Pag-asa and Mainang in Barangay Anupul and San Nicolas in Bamban.

He also insisted that the Capas’ request for road maintenance was a commitment given by the state-owned Clark Development Corp. (CDC) as proponent of the landfill project, and not MCWMC.

No charge

“Capas had been disposing of its garbage in Kalangitan for 10 years at no charge,” Colayco said.

“Tipping fees (amounting to P50 million) were waived during that period,” he added.

Data gathered by the Inquirer showed that 55 local governments, 360 companies and 180 housing units based in Clark, five locators at the Trust International Paper Corp. complex in Mabalacat City, 125 industrial clients and 80 percent of hospitals in Central Luzon use the landfill.

Kalangittan is within Sub-zone D of the Clark Special Economic Zone, which CDC manages. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon