MMDA to press for re-opening of San Mateo sanitary landfill

Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Bayani Fernando said yesterday he will press for the re-opening of the San Mateo sanitary landfill in Rizal province under controlled conditions to maximize its use for at least five to 10 more years.

Fernando said the MMDA has a pending petition before the Supreme Court (SC) to reconsider the closure order on the use of the San Mateo landfill in a ruling last Dec. 13.

The MMDA, through the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), filed last week a motion for reconsideration as Metro Manila braced for the mandated closure of open dumps on Feb. 16 under the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.

In its nine-paged petition, the MMDA argued the San Mateo landfill was not a "dump" but a waste disposal site "designed, constructed, operated and maintained in a manner that exerts engineering control over significant potential environmental impacts arising from the development and operation of the facility."

The MMDA said operations involved "stamping" of garbage by heavy equipment and covering it with 15 cms of soil.

In an interview with The STAR, Fernando said the importance of re-opening the San Mateo landfill can be best quantified in terms of cost benefits.

"If we do not operate it, it would be a waste of as much as P1 billion if we consider the difficulty of finding a suitable dump," Fernando pointed out.

San Mateo will be useful for at least five to 10 years under controlled operations of the MMDA."

Under the planned use by the MMDA, the landfill will serve as the repository of all garbage and wastes coming from eastern part of Metro Manila, which includes the cities of Marikina, Pasig, Mandaluyong and Taguig and the municipality of Pateros.

"It will be used exclusively by these five, or one fourth of what it used to handle in the past. Therefore, we can extend its use for up to 10 years," Fernando said.

He said the previous environmental concerns raised against the San Mateo landfill, which is right behind Marikina City where he used to be the mayor, were no longer valid. Antipolo residents brought their complaint to the court and petitioned for its closure on the grounds that garbage would seep into the watershed in the area.

"As a matter of fact, all run-off water goes to the Marikina River which is not used for the domestic water requirements of Metro Manila," Fernando pointed out.

At present, the MMDA chief noted, the landfill in Rodriguez (formerly Montalban) is the primary dump in Metro Manila, generating as much as much as 2,500 tons of garbage a day.

Once the Payatas dump in Quezon City is closed down, he warned, this would re-route garbage of Quezon City to the Rodriguez sanitary landfill.