Feature: How to Kill the Next Generation (3)

The trip to the so-called Bacolod Sanitary Landfill in Barangay Felisa is “scenic”. It looks like a construction site of a resort where two swimming pools

are dug. Suddenly the mounting garbage carelessly dumped at the right portion of the fenced “private property” turned everything horrid.

The struggle to save the succeeding generation must not cease, former Councilor Wilson Gamboa, Jr. said, adding, “What an expensive excuse for dumping garbage. What a crime to the succeeding generations.” He pointed the barren sanitary landfill and the three mega - “Garbage Mountains” to the other side.

The adventure loving Gamboa, Jr. drove into the interiors of three “Garbage Mountains”. There is a pathway leading to an area nearest one of the foothills. It is the portion of the biologically dead Cabura Creek is most visible. Asking innocent young children passing by for the name of the Creek, they answered “It is a canal!”

The children turned right into the thickets, beyond are group of shanties and makeshift shelters, abodes of scavengers subsisting on the Bacolod urban waste. They called the Cabura Creek “a canal”? At least, it was not for drinking water but surely it must be their toilet.

From a vantage point, southward of the Cabura Creek is totally covered by the Garbage Mountains. It stretches beyond and passes through the newly constructed sanitary landfill. The Lord knows the fate of the Creek in that portion of the area.

Northward, the Creek networks into areas of Murcia and Bago City. Are the Municipal Government of Murcia and the City Government of Bago aware that running water of the Cabura Creek contained loads of metallic and other poisonous chemicals excreted by tons of leachate? Leachate contaminated running water of the Cabura Creek and tributaries percolate underground and poisonous gases are emitted into the air.

Tons of leachate excreted by megatons of garbage mixed with running water of the Cabura Creek at the surface, seeped underground into water tables affecting drinking water and chemical emitted into the air are inhaled. The Garbage Mountains and soon garbage mounting in the “new” sanitary landfill kills the surface, underground and the air of the earth. Irreversible destruction of air, surface and underground and would last for generations.

Unresolved open dumpsites are crimes far more sinister than any crime against humans and properties. The succeeding generation is killed today!*