The problem no one prepared for is here
Cebu City officials have been looking at it for years and thought they can just shove aside in favor of its more beautiful surroundings. But one look at the Inayawan dumpsite last Thursday and Environment Secretary Gina Lopez promptly called for its closure as soon as possible, calling it an environmental bombshell. Maybe she meant ticking bomb.
But however she said it, it was clear to everyone within earshot what she meant: the Inayawan dumpsite is about to explode in our faces. It is only a matter of time before disease begins to creep out of the dump. The stench alone can kill. But it was its proximity to the sea that cleared all the cobwebs away. With sea levels rising due to global warming and climate change, Lopez said it won't be long before the dump gets swamped by the tides.
Surprisingly, Mayor Tomas Osmeña raised no objections and almost too amiably said he will comply with what the law says. It probably helped, of course, that the Osmeñas and the Lopezes have strong and close personal relations, the older brother of Osmeña, former Senator Serge, being married to Bettina Lopez, granddaughter of former vice president Fernando Lopez. But that is another story.
It probably helped as well that the mayor, no fool, already saw the handwriting on the wall. There was no way the Inayawan dump can be sustained regardless of its present location. Even if it had been located far from the sea, and removed far from residential and high-end commercial areas, there was no way such a small dump can take all the trash from such a big city as Cebu City.
That is why much of the criticism concerning the Inayawan dump is not so much why it was located where it is in the first place but why no alternative site was considered probably as early as 30 years ago. The order of Lopez was not to shut it down pronto, but to shut it down as soon as an alternative site is found. But the problem is that there is simply no alternative or at least any longterm alternative.
Before Osmeña reopened the dump in Inayawan, the previous administration contracted a private entity to haul the city's garbage to Consolacion. But the site in Consolacion is similarly destined to be short-lived. The truth of the matter is that there is no site in Cebu that has already been located as a future site for a real sanitary landfill that fits the global description of what a real landfill is.
Actually, the dump in Inayawan is being called a landfill, but only because some people are trying to delude themselves away from reality. If Cebu City cannot find a suitable site, perhaps it can solicit the assistance of the national government, which in turn might persuade certain local governments in the island to give up some of their real estate for the purpose. As things stand now, everything is so temporary for a problem that is so unyieldingly permanent.