MANILA: The dumping by the Bureau of Customs (BOC) of illegally shipped wastes from Canada to a sanitary landfill in Capas, Tarlac, had violated a resolution of the provincial board that allows the facility to accept only trash generated in the Philippines, a leader of a citizens’ group said.
Diana Figueroa, president of the Concerned Citizens of Bamban, cited the supposed violation of Resolution No. 108-2003 in a telephone interview on Sunday.
She said the resolution referred to the board’s decision “interposing no objections to the expansion of the established sanitary landfill in Sitio Kalangitan, Cutcut II, Capas, Tarlac, and to the use thereof by other cities and municipalities outside the province of Tarlac, including Metro Manila.”
The board issued the resolution in reply to a letter by former Environment Secretary Elisea Gozun that relayed the request of the National Solid Waste Management Commission to accommodate the wastes of other cities and towns.
The local governments of Capas, Bamban and Concepcion issued separate resolutions supporting the provincial board’s resolution, Figueroa said.
But Rufo Colayco, president and chief executive officer of the Metro Clark Waste Management Corp. (MCWMC), the firm that owns and operates the landfill, said neither the BOC nor his company violated the provincial board’s resolution because the document expressed “no objection” to the request of Gozun.
“The [Sangguniang Panlalawigan] cannot unilaterally impose conditions of projects [approved by the Clark Development Corp. or CDC], such as the landfill,” added Colayco, former president of the CDC and Bases Conversion and Development Authority.
Colayco said MCWMC did not violate its own environmental compliance certificate (ECC) because it agreed to bury only municipal solid wastes, as certified by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), in the facility.
DENR issued ECC No. 0012-704-213 to the landfill as “final disposal of nonhazardous solid waste and which specifies no limits within the country for the waste collection area of the facility.”
In an interview on Sunday, Tarlac Gov. Victor Yap said it would be best for the provincial board to review the local laws or resolutions relevant to the landfill to clarify if there were any violations by MCWMC.
As of July 8, the contents of at least 29 of 50 containers held by the BOC at the Port of Manila since June 2013 and transferred early this year to the Subic Bay Freeport to ease congestion there had been buried at the MCWMC’s Kalangitan landfill.
