School for environment management to rise beside Norzagaray sanitary landfill

NORZAGARAY, Bulacan – The first laboratory school for environmental management in the Philippines is set to rise beside the largest sanitary landfill in the country that will be inaugurated by Environment Secretary Lito Atienza today.

Ramon Angelo, the proponent of the largest sanitary landfill in the country located at Sitio Tiakad, Barangay San Mateo in this town told The STAR that the University of the Philippines informed him of the possibility to establish a learning center beside this giant sanitary landfill.

The 18-hectare sanitary landfill which is expandable to over 100 hectares will be inaugurated today by Atienza and will be witnessed by top government officials months after the former lifted the cease and desist order issued in 2006 by the Environmental Management Bureau.

“It’s been a dream of my consultants from UP to have a sanitary landfill here that will serve as a showcase of the Filipinos’ capability to manage their garbage,” Angelo said.

He said that his consultants has been speaking in different conferences abroad on environmental and solid waste management, but when asked for concrete example of what they are teaching, they cannot show anything.

Angelo also said that his consultants told him that the University of the Philippines might open a learning center beside this giant and modern sanitary landfill that will serve as laboratory for UP’s students of environmental management.

“Our project is the missing link to what they teach and once it becomes fully operational along with the learning center, we can expect that there will be higher demand for Filipino environment experts abroad,” he said.

However, he said that some of his consultants would rather stay in the country due to the fact that there remains a lot of problems and misunderstanding in waste management in the local government units across the country.

A chemical engineer by profession and have worked as consultant to a number of multinational companies here and abroad, Angelo collaborated with Mayor Feli­ciano Legazpi of Norzagaray town for the construction of the giant waste facility which they described as a “memorial park for garbage.”