CEBU CITY (PNA) — Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes said he has asked the Mandaue City Council for P33-million for the building of a sanitary landfill equipped with clay and polyethylene seal lining and a water treatment facility.

If the council continues to defer its support for the development of the dumpsite, Cortes said the city will return to its old practice of disposing its waste, “in complete mockery of the law.”

Cortes said he is willing to provide the City Council with a development plan for the dumpsite in answer to Vice Mayor Carlo Pontico Fortuna’s call for truth and transparency.

This came after Fortuna presented film footages said to have been taken of the dumpsite showing continued dumping of un-segregated garbage at the supposedly closed facility.

Fortuna had such footages shot as he wanted to know if the dumpsite is still open as documented by film, or closed as Cortes has announced.

He also wanted to know why non-segregated waste is still being dumped at the site, and what Cortes’ plans are for the site and for the proposed “eco-park.”

He said these are the reasons the opposition-dominated City Council deferred the passage of the proposed P33-million allocation for the dumpsite being requested by Cortes as part of the city’s first supplemental budget.

The footages showed barangay garbage trucks from at least five barangays delivering garbage to the dumpsite a week after the mayor formally closed it last June 5.

But Cortes contended that the footages commissioned by Fortuna’s were taken when some barangays were still in the process of building their own materials recovery facility (MRF).

Of the city’s 27 barangays, only two, Umapad and Alang-Alang, are without a MRF facility.