Payatas facility a best governance practice awardee

In his Aug. 31 column, Neal Cruz claimed that the Payatas garbage dump is fast becoming another Smokey Mountain. He seems to have based his observation on a decade-old (at least) situation. Allow us to update the columnist and the public with facts.

In 2008, the Payatas Controlled Disposal Facility Project was awarded the Galing Pook Award as a Best Governance Practice of a local government unit. In giving the award, the Galing Pook Foundation said: “Quezon City is the first Urban Center to implement the Solid Waste Management Act. The DENR’s Special Award given to the QC-LGU in August 2004, recognized the LGU’s promising and innovative program in achieving environmental improvements with the conversion of Payatas  (garbage dump) into a Controlled Facility and being the first in the country to capture methane gas from (a garbage dump) as an alternative energy source, thus ensuring the health and safety of the community.”

A top official of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) cited the Payatas dump as an “environmentally acceptable waste disposal system.” Michael Lindfield, an ADB senior housing specialist, made this report in 2004 when he affirmed that Payatas had become a controlled dump facility.

The Payatas project was chosen for presentation at the “CSD Intercessional Conference on Building Partnerships for Moving Towards Zero Waste” held in Tokyo, Japan last February 2011, as a model for other local governments in other parts of the world to learn from.

The facility’s waste-to-energy initiatives began in 2002, when the Philippine National Oil Company-Exploration Corp. (PNOC-EC) agreed to help Quezon City in its program to extract methane gas and to minimize threats of spontaneous combustion and explosion at the dump, as well as to mitigate health hazards posed by greenhouse gases.

In 2007, moving forward on its gas-to-energy project, the QC government signed an agreement with Pangea Green Energy, an Italian firm and its local subsidiary, for the extraction and conversion into electricity of biogas emissions. In 2008, this Biogas Emission Reduction Project was approved and registered as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This is the first of its kind in Southeast Asia.

Quezon City already closed the Payatas facility in December 2010. The facility is now undergoing post-closure care as mandated by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The biogas plant, however, continues to produce methane gas and work is under way to build a one-megawatt power plant in the same area.

The new Quezon City Sanitary Landfill started its operations in January 2011. It was given an Environmental Compliance Certificate by the DENR.

—HERBERT M. BAUTISTA,

mayor, Quezon City