Davao City’s sanitary landfill ready for use by December

Duterte to court: Don’t look at us if city would suffer flashflooding like Metro Manila

DAVAO CITY – By the yearend, this city would be one of the few cities with functional sanitary landfill, although Mayor Rodrigo Duterte said that a court order suspending some of his key operations officials are preventing a full clearing of clogged waterways and extrication of clogged materials from the canals.

The city government has spent P200 million to put up the landfill in Carmen, about 45 kilometers northwest of downtown, and Duterte said that its two previous dumpsites have all been planted with trees already.

Duterte said however, that he would defy a government ban on incinerators saying that he would purchase one machine to help hospitals dispose of human parts.

“I will use an incinerator. I will buy one to help the Davao Medical Center [and other hospitals] to dispose properly the human parts. They can not just dispose anywhere these intestines, or amputated legs, and those human parts,” he said. “This will be an exception [to that ban].”

The machines and equipment to implement the sanitary landfill disposal have been purchased, he told a regular Sunday public affairs program of the city government, Gikan sa Masa, Para sa Masa, over at ABS-CBN on October 18. He said that the equipment and their use were being fine-tuned.

“We are only one of the few cities which complied with the sanitary landfill requirement of government,” Duterte said.

Although sanitary landfills would require special features and financial requirements according to the economic capacity of localities, environment experts have asked basic requirementsin site design and operation before it can be regarded as a sanitary landfill.

One is full or partial hydrogeological isolation to ensure leachate security, or the protection of the groundwater from seepage of the liquid contaminants from the garbage. An Internet posting said that if a site cannot be located on land which naturally contains leachate security, additional lining materials should be brought to the site to reduce leakage from the base of the site (leachate) and help reduce contamination of groundwater and surrounding soil.

“Leachate collection and treatment must be stressed as a basic requirement,” it said.

Another requirement is the formal engineering preparations where designs “should be developed from local geological and hydrogeological investigations [and where] a waste disposal plan and a final restoration plan should also be developed”.

Also required is permanent control where “trained staff should be based at the landfill to supervise site preparation and construction, the depositing of waste and the regular operation and maintenance”.
A fourth requirement is for a “planned waste emplacement and covering: waste should be spread in layers and compacted. A small working area which is covered daily helps make the waste less accessible to pests and vermin”.

Duterte said he was told by technicians that the landfill would follow the process of covering the disposed garbage excluding toxic materials with a lining after a certain period, and after a certain number of layers, the site would be planted with trees.

He said that previous open dump sites have all planted with trees.”We won’t have problem anymore with disposal. Except that we would still have the problem of extricating the garbage from areas with only small alleys because these are the ones that clog our canals.”

He said he has formed a task force to work this out, although, he also expressed concern with the current suspension of three of his officials involved in the clearing operations of the canals. Suspended were City Administrator Wendel Avisado, Drainage Maintenance Unit head Yusop Jimlani, and City Engineer Jose Gestuveo Jr.

The Overall Ombudsman suspended them without pay on July this year after House Speaker Prospero Nograles filed administrative and criminal charges after the city demolished a Nograles Park along Quezon Boulevard purportedly to clear the canal of obstruction.

The local SunStar Davao reported that the Court of Appeals reversed the Ombudsman decision for alleged “grave abuse of its discretion”.

Duterte said he has appointed Jimlani to the task force to dismantle the blockade in the canals and “to know if the canal water could flow to the waterways”. He said that “the problem is Jimlani is afraid to remove the blockade because of the case against him.”

The program showed footages of clearing the canals using a backhoe but was unable to clear the clogged materials from a covered canal.

“It depends now on the court to decide on the merit of the case especially after what happened to the Philippines lately, but don’t look at our direction if the city would be flooded because our canals were unable to let flow the flood waters,” he said. “On our part, we have done our best efforts.”

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