Tree planting to highlight

two-day football festival

Friday, June 17, 2016

They will plant before they play.

Participants in the 2nd Environmental 7-a-Side Football
Festival will plant trees at the Sta. Maria Football Field in
Talisay City tomorrow.
The tree-planting activity will be held after the 7 a.m. opening
of the two-day tournament which is sponsored by the
Provincial Environment Management Office in partnership
with the Negros Occidental Football Association and with the
cooperation of the Solid Waste Management Department of
Dynamic Builders and the Provincial Sports Office.
The football competition is a highlight of The Provincial
Environment Month celebration.
Ronald Allan Treyes, NOFA secretary-general, said the
tournament will be played in four categories -- Under- 9 mixed
with seven competing teams, U-11 boys and U13 boys, each
with 18 teams divided in three groups, and U-17 girls with six
teams each in two brackets.

Source : http://www.visayandailystar.com/2016/June/17/sportnews3.htm

Flood waters rise again in Bacolod

BY SHIELA GELERA
Monday, June 29, 2015

Heavy rain triggered floods again in several areas in

Bacolod City yesterday afternoon, Rufino Alcala, City
Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office head,
said last night.
Alcala said flood waters rose in barangays 3 and
Taculing, and at Magsaysay-Araneta, Luzuriaga-Araneta,
and Luzuriaga-Gatuslao streets.
Several commuters, especially in the downtown area,
were stranded because of more than 30 minutes of nonstop rain, Alcala said.
Nearly knee-high flood waters were reported at Gatuslao
Street in Barangay 3 but the road was still passable,
Alcala also said.
He said flood waters did not rise yesterday in some of the
areas hit by floods Wednesday last week, such as near
the Panaad Park and Stadium in Barangay Alijis, and in
Barangay Mansilingan.
Garbage clogged in manholes and canals is still the top
cause of flooding problems in Bacolod, Alcala claimed.
Meanwhile, the Sangguniang Panlungsod approved
Wednesday a resolution urging the 61 barangays of
Bacolod to conduct clean up and clearing operations
against garbage and other obstacles in sewers and
canals, in preparation for the rainy season, to avoid
flooding.
The resolution was authored by Councilor Wilson
Gamboa Jr. and co-authored by Councilor Noli Villarosa.
In preparation for the heavy downpour of rain, there is a
need to clean and clear out garbage and other obstacles
in the sewers and canals in the barangays in order to
prevent flood and avoid the loss of life, limb or property,
the resolution said.
The clean-up and clearing operations will also help in
eliminating the breeding areas of insects especially
dengue carrying mosquitoes, it said.
Gamboa, who is the chair of the SP Committee on
Environment, added in the resolution that there is a need
to clear the heavily silted waterways to lessen flooding in Source :
http://visayandailystar.com/2015/June/29/topstory5.ht
many low-lying areas in the city.*SGG
m
Still no answers
to dumpsite issue

BY JUDY F. PARTLOW

Friday, November 13, 2015 source: http://www.visayandailystar.com/2015/November/13/negor2.htm

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Negros Oriental and the
Environment and Natural Resources Office of Dumaguete are both seemingly helpless in
finding the right answers to the city's garbage disposal system as mandated by law.
The DENR had ordered several years ago to have the open dumpsites in the country closed
under Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, former
Dumaguete fiscal Ely Escoreal said in a forum Wednesday.
But, until today, the city government has apparently failed to heed the repeated warnings
from DENR to close down the dumpsite and shift to sanitary landfill instead, Escoreal noted.
He pointed out that on certain days, there is the perennial problem of foul smell emanating
from the garbage disposal site in Barangay Candauay.
DENR provincial chief Charlie Fabre and Rey Awayan Sr., of ENRO, admitted in the same
forum that Dumaguete continues to face a dilemma on where to re-locate the city's
dumpsite.
The law specifies that local government units must shift instead to sanitary landfill as a
disposal site for their garbage, one thing that has never been fully implemented due to a
common problem of finding the appropriate location for it, Fabre said.
He said it becomes a persistent problem of the DENR calling the attention of the LGU, and
the latter in turn being unable to take necessary action as required by law.
Awayan said the implementation of the law that mandates the change to sanitary landfill
from an open dumpsite is to be gradually implemented to give enough time for LGUs to
prepare for the shift.
He, however, said areas close to the city's existing dumpsite are already saturated, and
there is no room for expansion.
Over the years, the city government had managed to find ways to control the open dumpsite
which can no longer address the needs of Dumaguete now.
The city government had acquired bulldozers to regularly flatten out the mounds of garbage
while also procuring millions of pesos worth of bio-enzymes to hasten the shrinking of trash
and speed up decomposition.
Awayan said the city government has also found another solution to address the garbage
problems in Dumaguete.
This is the establishment of Materials Recovery Facilities at the barangay level where
segregation at source is being pushed, Awayan said.
The barangays are urged to help collect, recover, recycle and reuse their own garbage and
bring to the dumpsite only the residual waste, he added.
Some of the barangays that are already engaged in the MRF program are Junob, Candauay
and Calindagan, Awayan said.

For now, these are just the measures the city government can do to tackle the garbage
problem as it seems there is no LGU that is willing to host Dumaguete's sanitary landfill,
Awayan stressed.*JFP