Canada’s ‘basura’ ends up in Tarlac

SOMETIME in 2013 and 2014, more than a hundred 40-footer container vans arrived in Manila from Canada. The vans were said to contain “heterogeneous scrap plastic.” According to a waste analysis and characterization study conducted by representatives of an interagency committee that included the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Environmental Management Bureau, the Department of Health-Bureau of Quarantine, the Department of Finance-Bureau of Customs, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Embassy of Canada, the vans contained the following:

• Baled municipal solid waste that contains residuals which cannot be recycled and are destined for disposal

• The wastes are not considered hazardous because they do not exhibit the properties of being toxic, reactive, ignitable and corrosive; however, these are considered wastes collected from households, the importation of which violates the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes.

Among the recommendations of the group were for the waste to be shipped back to Canada, with the DFA spearheading the bilateral negotiations. The DFA should also officially inform the committee on the actions done by the Canadian government.

Unfortunately, even before this recommendation could be acted upon, 26 of the vans from Canada were unloaded at the Kalangitan sanitary landfill, Capas, Tarlac, with eight more vans already in the premises waiting to be unloaded and 21 vans on their way to the landfill.

The question in the minds of many people is why Tarlac, the home province of President Aquino, should be the recipient of basura from abroad.

In 1999, Clark Development Corp. (CDC), headed by Rufo Colayco, entered into an agreement with a German consortium for the construction and operation of an integrated waste management center to be located in the Kalangitan Resettlement Area in Capas, Tarlac. Three years later, in 2002, the Tarlac provincial government, headed by Gov. Jose Yap, agreed to a proposal by the CDC, under Emmanuel Y. Angeles, president and CEO, for the establishment of a sanitary landfill project in Capas, Tarlac.

It must be noted, however, that in 2000 and 2001, the Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) of the province of Tarlac, headed by Herminio S. Aquino, then the vice governor and presiding officer, passed resolutions objecting to the establishment of a sanitary landfill in the same location. The objections were mainly because such a landfill would adversely and seriously affect the air quality in the surrounding areas and cause respiratory-related diseases. The landfill would also emit toxic fumes that would affect pregnant women, resulting in birth disorders, among other ailments.

In March 2002, the SP of Tarlac, this time under Vice Gov. Marcelino G. Aganon Jr., passed a new resolution “interposing no objection to the sanitary landfill in Capas, Tarlac, providing that a number of conditions were met.”

Among the conditions were: (1) the area to be developed as sanitary landfill shall be limited to five hectares only;

(2) the consortium or concerned entity shall pay all corporate taxes to the province of Tarlac; and (3) only garbage from the Clark Special Economic Zone (CSEZ) and Tarlac shall be accommodated.

In November 2003, another resolution was passed by the SP of Tarlac, also headed by Vice Governor Aganon “interposing no objection to the expansion of the landfill and the use thereof by other cities and municipalities outside the province of Tarlac, including Metro Manila.”

Incidentally, of the three Tarlac municipalities involved in the sanitary landfill project—Capas, Bamban and Concepcion—the municipality of Capas maintained its vehement objections to the landfill.

In September 2008, the SP of Tarlac, under Amado K. Go, acting presiding officer, passed a resolution “recommending the closure of the Kalangitan sanitary landfill for continued violation of terms and conditions as required under previous SP resolutions” and requesting Governor Yap to effect closure of the landfill.

Apparently the SP of Tarlac adopted differing positions on the issue of the landfill, depending on who its presiding officer was. The landfill continues its operations up to now.

Setting aside issues on misdeclaration, one can see why the containers had to pass through the Clark Zone. The use of the Tarlac sanitary landfill is specifically for garbage from CSEZ and Tarlac. The containers that were being unloaded contained garbage from Canada.

Incidentally, the president of the Clark Integrated Waste Management Corp. is Rufo Colayco, the former CDC chief executive.

The EcoWaste Coalition, an independent nonprofit environmental network of more than 100 public interest NGOs promoting chemical safety and zero waste, issued the following statement from its national coordinator, Aileen Lucero: “With respect to the issue at hand, allow me to reiterate our opposition to the dumping of illegally imported garbage from Canada in Tarlac or any other part of our national territory. It is grossly unfair for any community to serve as an unwilling burial site for Canada’s trash for the sake of diplomatic and political expediency. We are not a global dumpsite for imported rejects, scraps and wastes.

“The dumping of Canada’s trash in the Philippines is grossly intolerable and unethical as it makes our nation directly bear the burden of health, environmental, and chemical impacts from such residual discards from a highly developed country. Hindi tayo tambakan ng basura.”

On motion of the Tarlac SP, this time headed by Vice Gov. Enrique D. Cojuangco Jr., the issue has been referred to the committee on local governments, Senate of the Philippines, “requesting appropriate action on the dumping of waste from Canada in the Kalangitan sanitary landfill in Capas, Tarlac.”

This is an example of a bureaucratic mess involving multiple government agencies. How do we prevent another snafu from happening in the future, resulting in waste being dumped on our shores and buried in our land?

Whatever we come up with, somehow I find it difficult to understand how Canada’s basura could end up in our President’s home province, taking into account that he had just made the first state visit ever by a Philippine president to Canada. But as is often said, “Only in the Philippines….”