DON’T believe your government officials when they tell you that your town or city is clean and green—it’s not!
Don’t be fooled by garbage trucks regularly collecting your garbage. Follow those trucks and you’ll find where they’re taking their load—in hills and open fields and rivers, far from public view. That’s where they hide all the illegal dumpsites in this province.
That’s what Sonny Dobles did. He and son Diego drove around Pampanga and photographed all the garbage heaps they could find, organized them into a PowerPoint presentation, and showed them to anyone who was willing to watch—and weep.
Sonny Dobles is known in Pampanga for his activism and advocacy work. Just last month he marched to the Capitol to convince the Provincial Board to close down or relocate the piggeries which he blamed for the birth defects that afflict families living in their vicinity.
His PowerPoint presentation showed that mere smell of piggeries carries enough nitrate nitrogen, hydrogen sulphide, methane, ammonia and other toxins to cause a whole catalogue of ailments, from chronic fatigue and pulmonary edema to paralysis and cancer.
Mr. Dobles represents the local watchdog group Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement (PGKM) and the more proactive Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon (ADCL)—two non-government organizations that work with less talk and less money but achieve more for Pampanga than most government officials do.
It is Mr. Dobles’ photographs of the secret dumpsites that showed how our government officials had been fooling us all this time.
All along I had thought that our mayors were sending the garbage trucks to the Kalangitan landfill in Capas, Tarlac where modern and scientific facilities ensure that waste is compacted, treated and disposed without doing harm to the environment.
Well, it turned it that only Lubao and Apalit are doing it; all the rest are sending their garbage trucks elsewhere.
Mr. Dobles and son Diego discovered the illegal dumpsites hidden from public view behind tall grass and high fences or located in private properties with heavily guarded gates. Armed with only a camera, father and son followed garbage trucks, sweet-talked security guards, crossed rivers and climbed walls to find them.
One photograph shows a field of trash as far as the eye could see. By the shape and size of Mount Arayat in the background, one can tell that this dumpsite is in Mexico town.
Another photograph shows Guagua church with a mountain of garbage in the foreground, right beside—of my God, is that our ancient sacred river, the Rio Grande de La Pampanga?
Have we any respect left whatsoever for the land our ancestors gave us? We who have always taken pride in calling ourselves Kapampangans (“the people from the riverbanks”)—do we now treat our rivers as nothing but trash bins and toilets?
How stupid can we get that we dump our excrement into the very same water where we get the fish, clams, shrimps and crabs that land on our dinner plate?
There are dumpsites everywhere in Pampanga — in Mabalacat, in Porac, in San Fernando, in Angeles, in Masantol, in Macabebe, in Sasmuan — which can only mean that Pampanga is really one huge garbage heap.
Why aren’t these towns taking their garbage to the Kalangitan landfill like Lubao and Apalit do? Angeles City reportedly has been banned from the landfill since June 2009 for incurring a P65 million debt. The city tried to operationalize its own MRF (materials recovery facility) but it flopped because of its proximity to the public market and some government offices, and because it was just too small to accommodate the volume of unsegregated garbage that the city produces everyday.
If the city is banned from the Kalangitan landfill and does not use its MRF, where is it taking its gigantic garbage?
Mr. Dobles showed a photograph of the Mabalacat dumpsite, near the Sacobia River, which he said was now the largest dumpsite in the province. “They dry the garbage during the day and burn it at night to make room for the next day’s delivery,” Mr. Dobles says. “Which means while we all sleep during the night, toxic fumes fall from the sky on to our vegetables and fishponds, as well as enter our houses and our lungs.”
Next he showed photographs of a dumpsite in Barangay Anunas, where the city’s subdivisions take their garbage and garbage heaps choking Balibago River, Cutcut River, and Abacan River. As it turned out, the Sapang Balen which Bishop Pablo David and his volunteers clean every week, is by comparison the cleanest creek in Angeles City.
“The garbage they take out of Sapang Balen is put in garbage trucks, which unknown to them, proceed to unload it in an illegal dumpsite somewhere,” Mr. Dobles wryly says. “So we’re only transferring the dirt from one river to another.”
The long journey to finally solving this very complicated social problem actually begins with just one small, simple step: segregate.
If you separate the biodegradable from the non-biodegradable right at home, you cut by half the volume of garbage going to the garbage truck, and your mayor will have less to pay the landfill.
It also won’t hurt if you vote for candidates who will not pocket or juggle the people’s money meant for responsible garbage disposal.