From the PCIJ:
GMA-7’s late evening newscast last night showed a visibly irate Vice President Noli de Castro ordering the closure of a dumpsite found illegally operating in Cabuyao, Laguna. At least one paper carried the same piece of news today. Judging from their treatment of the event, the media portrayal of de Castro has been of your no-nonsense government man of action.
“This means that starting immediately after I handed the closure order, no dump trucks would be allowed to enter this facility,” fumed de Castro in Filipino as he castigated the dumpsite’s owners in front of residents and TV cameras. As the Inquirer reported, the vice president emphasized the dire necessity of closing the dump to protect the health of some 8,000 families living in the adjacent Southville Housing Project, the government’s resettlement area for railway dwellers displaced by clearing operations in line with the North Rail-South Rail Linkage Project.
It would have been perfectly all right for de Castro to be cast in quite a heroic light had the said news not been really more for show to enhance his public image. What was even more unfortunate is that journalists fell for it.
To begin with, it is not within the Vice President’s power to order the closure of a dumpsite. The authority belongs to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), which recently issued the cease-and-desist order against the dumpsite’s operator, Severiano Hain Enterprises Inc., for violating environmental laws.
So what was de Castro’s business serving the order on behalf of the environment department?
Sadly, that detail was apparently lost on the journalists who covered the event, even as they were completely unaware of the fact that de Castro, as the top official designated to coordinate resettlement efforts involving the government’s ambitious railway rehabilitation program, never found anything patently wrong when he ordered thousands of families relocated to Southville starting this year. Yes, despite the site sitting next to the said dumpsite, which is all of 10 hectares and three storeys high for it not to be noticed by the vice president during his visits.
In fact, until its closure yesterday, the Hain dumpsite had been in operation since 1998, first as an open dump without a permit, then as a “converted” controlled dump after being issued a permit in 2002. It should have been closed as early as February 16 this year, the deadline set under Republic Act No. 9003, the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, for the closure of all controlled dumps five years after the law’s effectivity. Despite the “authority to close” order issued last March 9 by the DENR’s Environmental Management Bureau in the Calabarzon region, the dump continued operating.
Just recently, it was also found to have been operating without clearance from the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) since 1998, for which the Cabuyao dump facility operator was slapped — though rather belatedly — with a notice of violation and a corresponding paltry administrative fine of P5,000.
That is why the owners can even confidently say that it is not their fault if the Southville residents cannot stand the stench of the dump since it has been existing long before the relocatees arrived. “If anybody is to be blamed, it is the NHA (National Housing Authority),” insists Carmelita Hain, the dumpsite manager.
Indeed. Why of all places did the NHA choose to construct housing units for the underprivileged right next to a dumpsite? R.A. 9003 prohibits the construction of any establishment within 200 meters from open dumps, controlled dumps or sanitary landfills. The law imposes on convicted violators a fine of not less than P100,000 but not more than P1,000,000, or between one to six years imprisonment, or both.
Why build a resettlement place near a dump site? because it's cheaper.
Related posts:
- De Castro replies to Archbishop Rosales’s letter
- Water at Southville relocation site
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