Briones: Using our mountains as a dump site

NOT many people have heard of Binaliw, a mountain barangay in Cebu City. Unless, of course, they live there or they reside in neighboring barangays.

After all, many people in the lowlands only hear about the villages that dot the city’s mountain ranges when there’s a drought.

Busay and “Tops” don’t count.

I know about Sirao but only because it was put on the map thanks to a privately-owned farm that grows ornamental flowers. Some well-meaning netizens had mistakenly dubbed the area as Cebu’s “Mini Amsterdam.”

My introduction to Binaliw was through last year’s news about ARN Builders, a private contractor, which proposed to build a solid waste management facility in the barangay.

It had asked the Cebu City Zone Board to grant its variance application for the land’s use so they can develop the area into a sanitary landfill.

I remember seeing pictures of City Councilor Joel Garganera inspecting the site after Milagros Englis visited his office to seek his help about an ongoing illegal quarry operation in the area in April of last year.

Englis was concerned because her own land was quarried without her consent or any formal documentation.

Back then, representatives of ARN Builders said they were only constructing a one-hectare leachate pond.

Too late, though. The project had already attracted the attention of local officials and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) 7. And the media, too.

Not that I was surprised.

As I said, the only thing I know about Cebu City’s mountain barangays are Busay and Sirao. And trust me, leachate pond and sanitary landfill are farthest from my mind when somebody mentions mountain barangay.

So when somebody says Binaliw, I imagine rows of flower beds or kilometers of upland trails that weave around lush vegetation or waters that cascade from many hidden waterfalls that apparently exist right outside our doorstep. I imagine crisp, fresh mountain air not the foul odor that will be generated by the garbage that will be dumped there if the Cebu City Government gets its way.

Let me share what Councilor Garganera wrote about the matter last year:

“You may think that this is about politics, but I am merely expressing my concern on the issue. Based on our research, the location of the proposed landfill in Barangay Binaliw is not far from the Central Cebu Protected Landscape Area. Moreover, it is located in a mountain barangay — if the necessary measures required by the EMB (Environmental Management Bureau), DENR and other regulating bodies are not observed, flash floods, landslides and other calamities may occur.”

That’s why I’m glad the council recently disapproved ARN Builders’s application for a special use permit to develop 1.7 hectares of lot into a central material recovery facility and sanitary landfill in Sitio Kainsikan.

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