IF
Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Lito Atienza
would remain true to his word, then he had better start hiring a lot of lawyers.
Probably, he had better start outsourcing lawyers, too, if the Supreme Court
will be unwilling to lower the passing marks for the bar examinations.
In a recent pronouncement, Atienza threatened to file charges
against local officials of Angono town in Rizal for allegedly using the
shoreline of Laguna de Bay, the country’s biggest lake, as an open dumpsite.
Atienza is very much in the right, assuming his facts are
correct. R.A. 9003 or the Ecological Sold Waste Management Act does mandate the
closure of all open dumpsites in the country. And, the deadline for that has
long passed. And if the law is to be implemented, then Atienza had better start
filing those criminal and administrative cases.
But the problem with R.A. 9003 is that it mandates the
unachievable with utter disregard for reality. The law requires that all cities
and municipalities dispose of their garbage at sanitary landfill standards. That
is a laudable objective but one, however, that requires a lot of money to
achieve and is well beyond the budgetary capabilities of most local government
units (LGUs).
Back when the Metro Manila Development Authority was
operating an honest-to-goodness landfill, waste disposal costs were already at
almost US$20 per ton. But the agency was able to capitalize on the economies of
scale since it handles most of Metro Manila’s daily waste output. But that is
not even mentioning the cost of acquiring and building all the safeguards needed
to operate the facility. Definitely, this has gone up as we have entered the era
of P35 per kilo rice and premium gasoline at almost P50 per liter.
To be blunt about it, there are very few LGUs in the country
that can afford sanitary landfill-level disposal costs even at US$20 per ton.
And, even fewer mayors who in their right mind will voluntarily comply with this
requirement. Not if it means robbing other equally important basic services of
funding.
Atienza admitted as much when he expressed the DENR’s
willingness "to provide technical assistance in addressing (Angono’s) solid
waste problem." "Technical assistance" is not the same as subsidizing the
construction and operation of a genuine sanitary landfill. There is also the
added financial burden of actually collecting the garbage from the households
and hauling it to the final disposal site.
The case of Angono, a legitimate first-class municipality, is
not unique. Things are definitely worse in the vast majority of the LGUs in the
country, particularly those classified as fourth, fifth, and sixth class
municipalities. Proper garbage disposal, for these LGUs, will always be a low
priority since their annual incomes just run into a few million pesos and they
are highly dependent on their Internal Revenue Allotments.
If the spirit of R.A. No. 9003 is to be faithfully applied,
lawyering will be the next growth industry in the country since almost every
city and municipal official will be in the firing line of the DENR. Charging the
local officials of Angono will open the flood gates to a slew of cases since the
dictum is that everyone deserves the same treatment under the law and there is
no room for selective prosecution.
No doubt, this was never the intention of the framers of R.A.
9003. One can only surmise that the good intentions of R.A. No. 9003 were
overtaken by the lobby efforts coming from the "environmentalists." To be
precise, the groups who have made "environmental protection" more than just
their avocation but their livelihood. That is the problem when lawmakers listen
to lobbyists more than the honest experts.
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Email address:
colonelromeolim@yahoo.com
