Payatas closure good for QC

Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista cited the shutdown of the Payatas sanitary landfill as the city’s recent biggest challenge but stressed that a garbage “crisis” was still averted despite the abrupt closure.

In his State of the City Address last week, Bautista said the closure instead opened opportunities for the city which generated over 954,000 metric tons of trash in 2016.

“Now we have the freedom to choose and we can choose more than one landfill operator,” he added.

The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority shut down the Payatas dump in July, a move later affirmed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

The DENR also rejected the city government’s request to reopen the landfill until yearend, citing the high risk of trash slides and violations of environmental laws.

“Many landfill operators are now competing for our garbage because they see the huge profits in handling,” Bautista said. “We are going to [hold a bidding] for the landfill that can best meet our requirements, based on our terms of reference that would be most beneficial to Quezon City.”

The city’s alternative dumps are in Rizal province and Navotas.