THE Cebu City Government plans not only to rehabilitate the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill in Barangay Inayawan but also to transform the garbage dumping site into a “self-contained city.”
This is what lawyer Janeses Ponce, chairman of the Solid Waste Management Board, said during the culmination of the three-day waste management summit on Friday, April 8, 2022.
Ponce said the City plans to proceed with the hauling of the garbage and use it as dumping material for Pond A located in the South Road Properties.
The plan on creating a self-sustained area once the landfill will be totally free from garbage will include building commercial and residential establishments, said Ponce.
He added that the rehabilitation of the landfill started in 2014 but was halted due to the change of administration in 2016, when Mayor Michael Rama lost the mayoral race to former mayor Tomas Osmeña.
Last Jan. 27, Rama signed a joint venture agreement (JVA) with Expedition Construction Corp., the developer that will rehabilitate the 15-hectare landfill.
The JVA includes mining the garbage in the landfill and dumping it in Pond A as a reclamation project.
“That (reclamation) already exists; ang atoa na lang ang pagpadayon (what we will do is just to continue it),” said Ponce.
Waste summit
The three-day waste summit organized by the Cebu City Government aimed to discuss and produce solutions to the garbage collection and disposal problems of the city.
The mayor expressed his appreciation to the organizers and participants of the summit and said holding this type of event was a success, especially that this is part of his “21-gun salute” projects during his ascension as mayor on Edgardo Labella’s passing last November.
Rama said the conclusion of the summit would only be a “springboard” for the city to have a more sustainable garbage collection and disposal program.
The list of outputs generated by the summit would be submitted to the City Council for adoption and further implementation, said Rama.
Rama added that his administration will put “teeth” and political will for the implementation of this output to solve the garbage issue.
Lawyer Diego Dacua, head of the City’s Department of Public Services, said the summit was able to consolidate solutions and technologies coming from different stakeholders.
However, Dacua said these will be further studied to check the feasibility of the programs to the demography of the city.
The summit was also able to uncover that waste generation came mostly from homes and that the role of the informal sector in retrieving recyclable wastes at source remained under-recognized and needs to be strengthened.
The participants also recognized that well-designed solutions and technologies for waste management can be a more profitable business such as conversion of biowastes to essential end products.
According to Dacua, the results of the summit will be used for possible amendments to the city’s 10-year Solid Waste Management Plan.