WHAT’S TOO good to be true, is most certainly not true.
Yeah, like these all-too-promising purveyors of waste-to-energy facilities.
Mesmerizing indeed is the promise – a vow is more like it, what with the attendant solemnity in the presentation – of a locality’s garbage transformed into the very energy for its empowerment. Indeed, electrifying.
To be punny, and corny, about it. Ha, ha, ha.
The City of San Fernando’s much heralded Spectrum Blue Steel Corp. (SBSC) is one case in point.
For the longest time, its waste-to-energy-facility stood bare and idle in Barangay Lara right down the FVR megadike, adjoining the city’s own version of Smokey Mountain.
It took more than prodding, indeed some stern warning, from the Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez, for SBSC to finally get into its garbage-turned-energy act.
Officialized in some press release of Councilor Reden Halili showing alleged SBSC-produced pellets at the Rodriguez’s office.
It took the Most Rev. Pablo Virgilio David, auxiliary bishop of San Fernando, to put the lie in the SBSC act – braving the stink, as we wrote here some time back, at the Lara dumpsite. And declaring it “still an open dump, illegal, where garbage burns.”
Even as Among Ambo recognized Rodriguez’s achievements in the field of good governance, he lamented:
“Mayor Oca is trying to do his best, but his best is not good enough.” Where waste management mattered.
On denial mode, one Esteban Callo Jr., chief engineer of True Green Energy Corporation (TGEG) that handles SBSC, went on record to say:
“Barangay Lara is where you can find Spectrum Blue Steel’s (SBS) pelletizing plant. The plant is close to the city’s former open dumpsite.”
So what gives with the mountain of garbage there?
“Unfortunately, we had problems in shredding residual wastes when our machine malfunctioned which forced us to pile up ready-to-shred residual wastes outside the plant.” So Callo admitted.
So where’s the promised deliverance of the city from garbage woes and the delivery of pelletized energy?
“Dubious.” So said respected business leader Marco Nepomuceno of the pelletizing deal. If only for the fact that the company pushing it is registered in Seychelles.
If only for the amount of money needed to put one — $27 million or over a billion pesos which a Seychelles-registered company will be suspect of really having.
Duplicitous on the other hand is the other waste-to-energy facility that made a scene in Pampanga.
“The best solution to the garbage problem in the province.”
So was heralded in the signing of a memorandum of agreement between Gov. Lilia G. Pineda and Lubao Mayor Mylyn Pineda-Cayabyab, and James Mackay, chairman of the Pampanga Green Management Inc. (PGMI) and the MacKay Green Energy Inc. for the establishment of a US$63-million facility that will convert the province’s garbage into electricity.
Read the media reports then:
The facility will not entail any cash-out from the provincial government while the Lubao municipality will provide the site for it at its central materials recovery facility in Barangay Sta. Catalina.
The facility is expected to be completed within four months from the signing of the agreement.
Through the process dubbed as “treating metropolitan solid waste and using the refuse derived fiber to produce renewable energy,” 800 metric tons of garbage a day will go through combustion to generate 22 megawatts of electricity, enough to energize 110,000 households at the rate of one megawatt for every 5,000 households.
“With combustion at 1,200 to 1,800 degrees centigrade, the facility produces no toxic gases,” Mat Evans of MacKay Green Energy Inc. said.
…MacKay has insisted that the facility produces “no gases or subsidiary wastes that may be harmful to people” and that “the technologies for the combustion turbines are eco-friendly.”
“With our system, there will be no longer any need for landfills. With our facility you can be guaranteed to be safe from any leachate, which is very hazardous. Methane issues will no longer be a problem,” he said.
…MacKay Green Energy’s venture in Pampanga is considered as a flagship project “to eventually make the country as the springboard to supply its technology in the Asia-Pacific region.”
Shortly thereafter, ground was broken at the Lubao materials recovery facility, for Mackay’s garbage digesting electric plant.
That was the last thing heard of it.
Too good to be true. And definitively not true.
A timely caveat to LGUs, exasperated with their garbage problems, ready to grab at anything with some hues of green proffered before them.
