The Environmental Management Bureau has granted Benguet an environmental compliance certificate (ECC) for an engineered sanitary landfill (ESL) temporary storage facility that the latter sought to establish at the Antamok open pit in Itogon’s Barangay Loacan.

The ECC was approved by MGB regional director Paquito Moreno Jr. earlier this month after the local government unit was able to comply with environmental impact assessment requirements.

The certificate allows the LGU to develop, to operate and to maintain the project subject to conditions prescribed for engineered sanitary landfills.

“This is a welcome development but we will have to talk it over first with the municipal officials of Itogon who will be hosting the facility,” said Gov. Nestor Fongwan last week. “It is practically their facility with the province helping out in its development.”

The governor said a South Korean company has agreed to finance the undertaking.

Last year, the South Korean consulting engineering firm DOHWA identified the Antamok open pit in Itogon as the most ideal site for an engineered sanitary landfill for the province of Benguet and has recommended the putting up of a temporary ESL nearby to accommodate solid waste in the interim.

The firm’s Benguet project design has taken into consideration the waste production of the province’s 709,356 population as well as the increase in tourist visit or in waste generation.

Benguet’s waste generation has been placed at an average of 194 tons daily, almost twice bigger than Baguio City’s.

Fongwan said that the proposed ESL master plan has emphasized waste segregation and eventually recycling and composting as the mid-term objectives. “The short term plan is to come up with a landfill but the long-term plan is to transform it into waste recovery facility,” he said.

The storage facility would be built on a three-hectare site provided by the Benguet Corporation in lieu of the permanent ESL that will be built later.