A GROUP that calls itself the EcoWaste Coalition issued a statement last week criticizing a Court of Appeals (CA) decision to endorse Ecoshield Development Corp.’s (EDC) 44-hectare, engineered sanitary-landfill project in Obando town, Bulacan province.
The group, represented by Aileen Lucero, claimed that the CA ruling would “greatly exacerbate the impacts of climate change in the highly vulnerable town of Obando and the entire Manila Bay….”
The landfill project, she said, “is being built in a mangrove-forest area and a flood-prone fishing village.”
I don’t know where the EcoWaste spokesman got her facts, but I happen to be privy to the details of this project, including the contents of the CA ruling that practically upheld the project as a model green project worthy of replication.
First of all, this state-of-the-art engineered sanitary-landfill project is not just “being built” or under construction. This P600-million facility is, in fact, already built and ready for action any day now.
Second, it was purposely built with a protective mangrove “forest”, precisely to ensure that the ecological balance in and around the project site is preserved.
Incidentally, the clean-and-green features of this project make it stand out as a class of its own. For example, don’t you ever dare compare it with the Philippine Ecology Systems Corp. (Phileco) garbage dump owned by controversial businessman Reghis Romero III of Smokey Mountain fame.
The Phileco dumpsite is just one or 2 kilometers away. Obando townsfolk—and Lucero should take note of this—can’t help but be reminded of this garbage dump’s noxious presence. Apart from its “towering” height (it was a small hill last year, but, now, it is like another Smokey Mountain trying to touch the clouds), much of the loose garbage on its steep sides are blown away and find their way to the surrounding bay waters.
Like timber, some garbage are floaters and others are sinkers. The pieces that sink will rest on the seabed forever, but the floaters would be like flotsam and jetsam, drifting in all directions. More often than not, the waves that lap at the shores of Obando and Meycauayan City carry much of these unwanted wastes, courtesy of Phileco.
Come to think of it, why does EcoWaste insist on zeroing on the EDC project and, yet, has not raised as much as a whimper against the sloppily maintained Navotas City landfill? A lot of people have begun asking this and making all sorts of nasty speculations.
What’s puzzling about EcoWaste’s complaint is that it was amply represented by a handful of petitioners, led by Ma. Theresa Bondoc, when they first complained about the EDC project.
These petitioners even asked the Supreme Court (SC) to stop the project with a temporary environmental protection order, or Tepo. Fortunately, the SC did not grant it and, instead, asked the CA, as a trier of facts, to determine which side was telling the truth.
After more than three years of meticulously hearing out both sides, the CA came up with the verdict upholding EDC’s side. It, in effect, also threw out the petitioners’ claims as absolutely baseless.
In its decision, the CA ruled: “Contrary to the petitioners’ assertion, the establishment of the Obando sanitary landfill will significantly facilitate the cleanup of the Manila Bay, in direct response to the SC’s continuing mandamus, the writ of kalikasan.”
What could be plainer than that?
Perhaps, EcoWaste is simply not aware that the owners of the EDC project—former Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua and his son, D. Edgard A. Cabangon, president of EDC—had earlier committed to be the private-sector component of the provincial government’s project to begin the long-overdue cleanup of the heavily polluted Marilao-Meycauayan-Obando River System (MMORS). To demonstrate his sincerity, the ambassador donated a 1-hectare property in Meycauayan for the establishment of a waste-treatment plant in conjunction with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
The MMORS has been listed by United States-based think tank Blacksmith Institute as the fifth dirtiest river system in the world.
Before I conclude this, here’s a brief background about the first-of-its-kind writ of kalikasan issued by the SC several years ago to stop the escalating degradation of Manila Bay.
The writ is actually a standing order, or continuing mandamus, requiring all local government units and the people in the Metro Manila area and adjacent provinces, like Cavite and Bulacan, to abide by the provisions of Republic Act (RA) 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.
RA 9003 has remained largely unimplemented since it was passed and signed into law on January 26, 2001. For example, the provisions requiring each city or municipality in the country to build its own sanitary waste-disposal system, such as an engineered sanitary landfill facility, have largely been ignored.
The public will surely remember that, before the justices of the High Court issued the historic writ, they took a boat ride around the bay and saw for themselves the extent of the pollution and the degradation to which the once-lovely bay had fallen into.
We can only imagine that almost everywhere they looked, the bay water was covered with all sorts of floating garbage. The ugliness they saw must have shattered all romantic notions they used to have of the bay.
The justices were so shocked and awed that the writ of kalikasan pertaining to the protection of the bay was issued soon after their ocular inspection. The writ enjoined all communities that lined the banks of rivers or waterways that flowed into the bay must make sure that such waterways are not used as dumping sites for all sorts of household and commercial or industrial wastes.
But, as I said, there was not much compliance on the part of the towns and cities through which these waterways flowed. Result: The tons upon tons of all forms of solid and toxic wastes being vomited by these waterways into the bay on a daily basis have increased exponentially over the past decade.
To be fair, however, most of the cities in Metro Manila do not feel that the Manila Bay pollution problem is their direct concern, even if their respective daily garbage outputs are also exponentially increasing each day.
E-mail: Omerta_bdc@yahoo.com.