LANDFILLS

SOMETHING SMELLS

Carmen Rosello

In the 1980s, Smokey Mountain immortalized the moral and physical decay of society, highlighted extreme poverty and the degree of disparity in ownership of wealth and resources, and painted utter hopelessness in the country among a great number of people striving to earn a bitter living from the filth and dirt of other people. It symbolized the indignity of the destitute and hungry and showcased the wide disparity in living standards among Filipinos not only in Metro Manila but more so in the provinces. 

In today’s newspapers, we time and again hear about Barangay Felisa. This is where our Mayor and his councilors agreed to put up a controlled sanitary landfill to solve Bacolod’s ever increasing problem on solid waste management. City officials have assured Bacoleños that the proposed sanitary landfill will address the city’s waste disposal and that precautions have been in place to protect its residents in the nearby surroundings and preserve its ecosystems. The move paves the way for concrete measures for the city to comply with local environment statutes requiring government units to close open dumpsites by 2010. Also, public and private sectors of society are required to segregate their garbage, recycle, and only residual wastes will be collected by the city (the 3Rs - Reduce, Recycle and Re-Use). 

What makes the sanitary landfill different? Engineered sanitary landfills, as opposed to garbage dumps, employ a number of precautions to ensure both the safety of residents in the surrounding areas and the conservation of nearby ecosystems. They have liner systems to protect the groundwater from leachate, as well as a waste water treatment facility to collect and treat the leachate until it is clean enough to be reintroduced into flowing water systems like rivers or the sea. 

A sanitary landfill is a site where waste is isolated from the environment until it becomes SAFE! Waste is spread in layers on a piece of property, usually on marginal or sub marginal land, making them compact then covered with layers of soil. The landfill is lined or sealed with rubberized material that will prevent contamination by leachates spreading downward through the geological formation. 

There are four criteria that are necessary to set up a sanitary landfill. 

* Full or partial hydro geological ( study of water movement in rock) isolation: if a site cannot be located on land which naturally contains leachate (liquid waste in landfill) security, additional lining materials should be brought to the site to reduce leakage from the base of the site and help reduce contamination of groundwater and surrounding soil. If a liner - soil or synthetic - is provided without a system of leachate collection, all leachate will eventually reach the surrounding environment. Leachate collection and treatment must be stressed as a basic requirement. 

* Formal engineering preparations: designs should be developed from local geological and hydro-geological investigations. A waste disposal plan and a final restoration plan should also be developed. 

* Permanent control: trained staff should be based at the landfill to supervise site preparation and construction, the depositing of waste and the regular operation and maintenance. * Planned waste emplacement and covering: waste should be spread in layers and compacted. A small working area which is covered daily helps make the waste less accessible to pests and vermin. 

Residents in Barangay Felisa have reasons to decry our city officials’ move to locate the dumpsite in their neighborhood. Despite assurances that standards have been in place with engineered treatment facilities, chemical agents will be used to rid possible water and air contaminants from toxic organic wastes, and a buffer zone of trees will be built around the dumpsite, local residents and environmentalists have remained pragmatic. Studies made on sanitary landfills show that deadly toxins - petro chemicals, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide and other non-methane organic chemicals like benzene, trichloroethyline and vinyl chloride - end up seeping into the air and adversely affecting people living nearby. At a minimum, exposure to air contaminants cause asthma, breathing problems, nausea and headaches. Chronic exposure over the years may cause depression and nosebleeds, impair motor skills, impairment of the brain, balance and moods. 

Landfills have also been found to be producing deadly organic solvents and heavy metals produced from leachate even 15 years after site closure. Despite the presence of water treatment facilities, the underground water in areas near landfills remains to be threatened by the same organic by-products that are supposed to be hazard free. In fact, a study in the US shows that landfills in California that have been technically closed for 20 years still generating methane, which is also one of the greatest single contributor to global warming. Scientists also reveal that methane has a 30% higher warming effect than carbon dioxide (thus, landfills contribute more to Global Warming than preventing it). 

But advocates of sanitary landfills think otherwise. Then we throw these questions back at them. How sure are you that the environment is finally safe if we use them? Knowing the degree of inconsistencies and the poor quality of projects and engineering techniques being employed by the public sector in our country, I’m pretty sure environmental contamination from landfills will remain a serious problem in protecting our waterways, underground aquifiers, drainage systems, and farm irrigation infrastructure. It doesn’t take a genius to compare quality standards in our public sector with the rest of Asia - just look at the crater-filled roads and uneven highways costing taxpayers billions of pesos.

Basically, we should not be too confident with the sanitary landfill promise to immediately solve the city’s solid waste management problem. I am sure that negative things are bound to come out with the environment and to the people living near the site. Operations will also be a headache in maintenance, quality management and daily operations with the basic notion that waste management especially segregation remains a middle class household concern and educating slum dwellers about throwing one’s trash properly a gargantuan task. 

We hear stories that BAHA is just a bunch of self centered people, concerned only with issues that serve their needs. But how mistaken they are. The issues on flood, what causes floods and how to solve this mess are everyone’s concern. Experts say that landfills take in only 30 to 40% of the irrecoverable solid waste materials. This means that the rest of the trash (some 60-70% of it) can be controlled by ordinary citizens like you and me.*