BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan ordered the City Engineering Office to institute appropriate measures that will immediately make the newly constructed chute within the city’s temporary waste transfer station comply with the prescribed no-touchdown policy.
The city chief executive underscored the need for the City Engineering Office to correct the defects of the newly-constructed chute to make it immediately functional for the city’s garbage trucks to transfer to the hauler’s trucks the generated residual waste without the waste touching the ground.
“We need to maximize the use of the newly-constructed chute once its discovered defects will be corrected by the City Engineering Office and comply with the no-touchdown policy imposed on the local government by the Cordillera Office of the Environmental Management Bureau,” Domogan stressed.
Under the no-touchdown policy, the city’s garbage trucks must directly transfer to the hauler’s trucks the collected garbage through the chute so no garbage will touch the ground preventing the creation of unsanitary conditions in the area and the production of obnoxious odor emanating from the stockpiled garbage.
While the corrective measures are still being instituted on the chute, the city government will still be allowed to have the garbage touch ground but the same should not exceed 24 hours pursuant to the stringent guidelines imposed by the EMB-CAR on the operation of the temporary waste transfer station.
The local government was compelled to transfer the temporary waste transfer station within portions of the Baguio Dairy Farm after the transfer station of the city’s private hauler was ordered closed by a La Trinidad-based court for alleged violation of existing laws, rules and regulations.
Domogan asks the residents’ understanding that the most doable solution to the city’s garbage disposal woes is for the hauling of the residual waste to an available sanitary landfill outside the city while it is still searching for a permanent site for its proposed integrated solid waste facility.
Under the initial conditions imposed by the EMB-CAR for the operation of the temporary waste transfer station, no garbage should touch the ground once the local government shall have completed the construction of the chute and the concreting of the pavement of the property to prevent unsanitary conditions to develop once garbage will fall on the ground.
The local government earmarked some P11.7 million for the construction of the chute and the concreting of the pavement of the temporary waste transfer station in compliance with the EMB-CAR rules and regulations for the temporary operation of the facility.
By Dexter A. See