LEGAZPI CITY, (PNA) -– The Department of Environment and Natural Resources Bicol regional office has commended the closure of Legazpi City’s open dump site in Barangay Banquerohan and the readiness for use of the adjacent newly constructed sanitary landfill where the city’s collected garbage will be deposited.
Gilbert Gonzales, DENR Bicol regional executive director, who inspected the material recovery facility on Saturday afternoon, told the PNA on Sunday that he was satisfied with this development in the project that the DENR and the city started about three years ago.
He said the City Government of Legazpi submitted a Safe Closure and Rehabilitation Plan to DENR’s Environmental Management Bureau in October 2009 and the DENR-EMB V issued an authority to close in November of the same year.
Part of the safe closure and rehabilitation of dump action plan are the site preparation, road construction, leachate collection system, slope protection system, erosion control, flood control, drainage system, gas venting, soil covering, final capping, aesthetic improvement and landscaping.
Gonzales learned from the caretaker of the Material Recovery Facility (MRF) that they record some 12-14 trips of garbage trucks that dump collected wastes from the city’s villages daily.
He quoted the caretaker as saying that each fully loaded dump trucks could carry about 12 tons of segregated residual wastes, which the facility processes to produce compost soil.
The caretaker even pointed to some healthy banana plants grown on compost soil, Gonzales said.
The DENR Bicol official noted that the 3,000 seedlings planted by his office beside the garbage depository have already grown sizeably.
Earlier, the World Bank WB) chose Legazpi City as a model local government unit out of the six LGUs implementing the Ecological Solid Waste Management Program.
It cited the city’s proper segregation of solid waste materials and its effective campaign in preventing the open burning of garbage in the community.