50 -YEAR OLD DUMPSITE TO BE FINALLY CLOSED

DAGUPAN CITY – The city’s 50 year old dumpsite will soon be closed in compliance with Republic Act No. 9003, or the “Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000”.

This became certain after President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, in his last official act before stepping down from Malacanang, issued Proclamation No. 1302, series of 2016, amending Proclamation No. 98, series of 1963 issued by then President Diosdado Macapagal, segregating 19,261 square meters of public land declared as parks and playgrounds in Bonuan Binloc for waste management facility purposes of the City Government of Dagupan.

In her inaugural address on June 30, Mayor Belen T. Fernandez said the signing of the proclamation by President Aquino last June 23 will pave the way for the establishment  by the city of its waste-to-worth facility, thereby hastening the impending closure and clean-up of the old dumpsite in Bonuan.

The facility, to be built at no cost at all to the city, will convert garbage collected daily from homes, markets, schools and factories, into diesel fuel for jeepneys and motor boats as well as biogas to be used for cooking in homes and also lighting for them.

“Not only that, we will also help the world environment by making sure that our garbage, our plastic debris will not pollute our oceans. This will in turn, allow us to bring Dagupan’s beaches back to their former beauty and glory,” she said.

The $8.2 million waste-to-worth project will be established with the help of Procter and Gamble, the U.S. State Department, International Ocean Conservancy, Asian Development Bank, United Nations and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Last year, Mayor Fernandez was invited as a resource speaker in a world ocean forum in Chile that discussed among others the establishment of the waste-to-worth facility that will make Dagupan eventually as model of this project in the whole world.

The old dumpsite is generating some 30 metric tons of wastes daily which is the minimum requirement to run the plant.

Fernandez said the scavengers who will be displaced with the closure of the dumpsite will be resettled in row houses in Sito Korea, Bonuan Binloc. A day care center was also built in the area for their children.

But once the facility is operational, the scavengers will be among the first priority to be hired to work in the facility. (Joseph C. Bacani/CIO/June 30, 2016)