Capas sanitary landfill begins operations next month

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga - The first phase of the $215-million sanitary landfill in Barangay Kalangitan in Capas, Tarlac, is expected to be operational by the last week of August.

The landfill, which uses German technology, will take in garbage from Tarlac and the Clark special economic zone.

Using heavy equipment and computerized gadgets, over 100 workers, hired mostly from Capas, have been working 20 hours daily to complete the first phase of the controversial project.

Despite the rains yesterday, Tarlac Gov. Jose Yap Sr., Tarlac Rep. Jesli Lapus and Clark Development Corp. (CDC) president Emmanuel Angeles inspected the site where German experts demonstrated the use of computerized equipment to seal thick plastic to be used as landfill layers.

Yap called on 15 barangay officials from Capas and neighboring Bam—ban, who also inspected the site, to convince the project’s critics to join a monitoring team which will ensure that the landfill would not endanger the health of local folk.

The first phase initially covers only three of the 100 hectares of the proposed landfill area.

"The three hectares will accommodate wastes from Tarlac and Clark, but if (the landfill) is successful, the people of Tarlac would help Capam—pangans by also opening it initially to Angeles City," Angeles told the barangay officials.

But Red Fuentes, chief of the CDC’s environmental management division, said the landfill will not accommodate wastes from Metro Manila. This restriction was stipulated in the resolution which the provincial board passed in support of the project.

"Once finished, the landfill will be the first of its kind in the country," said Lapus, citing provisions in the Local Government Code mandating local government units to build sanitary landfills within five years.

"I have stayed in Germany for six years and I can attest that German technology is highly reliable. If the Clark project fails, then the German proponent’s international reputation will suffer," Lapus added.

The German consortium Inge—nieurburo Birkhahn Nolte and Heers and Brockstedt (BN-HB), the project proponent, is investing $215 million in the landfill project.

Its chief resident engineer, Hoger Holst, said special plastic pipes, which will be used to carry garbage leachate to a treatment plant, are similar to the ones being used in Japan.

"The Japanese government had urged the use of such kinds of pipes which were the only ones that survived the Kobe earthquake," Holst said.

Holst said the landfill can generate some 10 megawatts of electricity from methane which wastes produce.