‘Kalangitan’ clarifies waste generation figures

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -- The Metro Clark Waste Management Corporation (MCWMC) or Kalangitan facility located in Capas, Tarlac sought over the weekend to clarify and “correct” the waste generation statistics recently bared by the City Government.

In a statement sent to Sun.Star Pampanga, MCWMC president and general manager Armando Garcia emphasized that Kalangitan “never stated in any published article that only 100 metric tons per year is generated (by the city),” contrary to claims of the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (Cenro) headed by Mayor Oscar Rodriguez’s chief of staff Rowee Siron-Freeman who provided the “extrapolated” statistics.

The Cenro, in earlier reports relayed to Sun.Star Pampanga, said the waste received at its Barangay Lara Transfer Facility has gone down by 30 percent based on official receipts received at the materials recovery facility.

It also noted that the data on waste generation and handling in San Fernando was “inaccurate” as the statistics were allegedly “derived by a private sanitary landfill (MCWMC), from population projections instead of actual data,” adding the “assumed” average actual daily volume of 100 metric tons of waste generated by the city in 2011 as total for the year -- entered as incorrect data -- was subtracted from the annual volume of 51,464.16 metric tons extrapolated from estimated total population, resulting at a higher number.

“The methodology was entirely wrong,” the Cenro pointed out in its statement.

But Garcia said the statistics used by MCWMC is based primarily on population figures of the National Statistics Office as officially published in the agency’s website www.census.gov.ph.

“The waste generation statistics we used for the City of San Fernando is 0.40 kilos or 400 grams per person per capita per day, which is less than 500 grams per capita per day used by the National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC)… So the 400 grams per capita per day is conservative,” Garcia said.

“Since the City of San Fernando’s population is 285,912, all one has to do is multiply this by 400 grams and you have a total of waste generation 114.36 or approximately 114 tons per day generated by the entire population… then clearly in 365 days they generate 41,610 metric tons per year. What the City of San Fernando has disposed at our sanitary landfill based on actual records of their trucks passing through our computerized weighbridge for the entire year of 2011 is 1,678 metric tons only,” he said.

“On a monthly average basis, this means an average of only 139 tons per month or an average daily disposal of 4.66 tons, equivalent to a five-ton dump truck. Based on these statistics, the City of San Fernando has only disposed 3.3 percent of its total generation at our sanitary landfill,” he said.

Garcia added that Kalangitan “understands [that] the City of San Fernando is disposing, segregating and processing 96.7 percent of its total waste generation at the Lara dumpsite”, but the city, he said, has the “responsibility to its constituents, concerned environmentalists and the press to state all the facts and figures in its Lara operations to clear the air and avoid speculations and inaccuracies in the spirit of good governance and transparency.”

“We cannot accept that figures in our waste generation statistics are inaccurate and we want to correct that erroneous impression,” Garcia said.

Meanwhile, in a phone interview on Saturday, Siron-Freeman vowed to look into the concerns of MCWMC, as they have yet to receive a copy of Garcia’s letter.

She also said that Cenro will stand by its earlier statements on the issue that was disseminated to the media.