Waste Law Violations Fuel Dumpsite Disasters, Legarda Warns

MANILA, Philippines — Dumpsite disasters — such as the one that happened on Jan. 8 in Cebu, where a 10-story pile of garbage collapsed and killed 36 people, and another that collapsed in Rizal on Feb. 20, which killed one individual — exposed the failure to enforce the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, Sen. Loren Legarda said in a statement on Monday. That meant some waste facilities no longer complied with sanitary landfill standards and yet continued operating, she pointed out. “That’s the point. It’s not a landfill. It’s a dump site. It’s an open dump,” Legarda said after the joint hearing of the Senate committee on environment, natural resources and climate change and the committee on public works. Among the measures taken up at that hearing were her Proposed Senate Resolution Nos. 303 and 338, seeking an investigation into the landfill disaster in Cebu and Rizal. “If it’s not an environmentally engineered sanitary landfill, call it what it is — a dump site. That’s a violation of the law,” she added. According to Legarda, the hearing validated the concerns she raised in her resolutions after uncovering serious lapses in the operation and oversight of the landfill sites, among these: “You wouldn’t build homes on the banks of a river or an estero because you know the danger. The same principle applies here. No community should be put at risk beside a dumpsite. The safety of people can’t be sacrificed because of neglect or poor compliance with the law, Legarda said in a mix of English and Filipino. For Legarda, this is not a new fight. During her first term, as a young 38-year-old senator, she authored the measure that would later be enacted in January 2001 as the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, or Republic Act No. 9003. She had been repeatedly warning that poor waste management and the continued operation of open dumps endangered both people and the environment. At that time, many regarded garbage as an unlikely subject for legislation, she pointed out. But she persisted, arguing that stronger safeguards were needed to prevent disasters before they happened. The Payatas dumpsite tragedy in 2000, in which hundreds were killed, underscored the urgency of the reforms she had long been advocating. “That’s exactly why we did it, to stop tragedies like this from happening, because it happens. Whenever you see these dump sites, remember Smokey Mountain. Remember the Payatas tragedy that happened in 2000,” Legarda said. “It’s sad to think that, after more than two decades have passed, the Payatas tragedy is knocking on the door again. Today’s tragedies are the ghost of Payatas,” she added. She pointed to where the law keeps breaking down. “The implementation of RA 9003 is per barangay, per household. That’s where we in the Senate should also be looking,” she said, citing a Commission on Audit finding that only 39 percent of barangays nationwide have functional Materials Recovery Facilities. “Because of the failure to fully enforce RA 9003, we are again facing tragedies like the collapse of mountains of garbage,” she added in Filipino. “I will join in if RA 9003 needs to be amended to solve problems in its implementation. Our measures must be resolutely forward-looking and decisively climate-adaptive,” she said. She underscored that establishing an effective waste management system requires immediate support from policy implementers and the passage of new, complementary laws to address the sheer volume of waste at its source. With that, Legarda has also filed several related measures. “It’s our responsibility to Filipinos to ensure that [the tragedies in] Payatas, Binaliw, and Rizal will remain our lessons from the past and that no such tragedy will gain bury the lives, livelihood, and future of our communities,” Legarda concluded.