metro

New garbage rule creates mess

Municipal officials and industry leaders will meet today to discuss a solution to the problem.

Maydée Romero/la prensa

Piling up:Industrial waste could become a problem because few companies have complied with new rules about its disposal. 1143196

A meeting will be held today between government officials and industry leaders from the districts of Panama and San Miguelito to determine how the issue of waste will be handled now that new rules regarding its disposal have gone into effect.

Those rules, which went into effect Jan. 1, mandate that the waste needs to be pretreated before it can be disposed of in the Cerro Patacón landfill.

According to Clara Vargas, a representative of the Panama City Mayor's Office, only one company currently complies with those regulations.

Harley Mitchell Moran, the legal advisor to ANAM, the government’s primary environmental authority, explained that the regulations are required under the parameters that Panama is required to comply with under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Luis Carlos Castroverde, president of an organization representing poultry producers, described the ban as “a huge problem.” Castroverde indicated that the measure would not only affect the industry, but also residential areas, because waste from septic tanks will also be banned from the landfill.

Valerio D’ Sanctis, president of the Union of Industrialists, explained that the group will be meeting today with municipal authorities and representatives of the company that operates the landfill to search for alternatives to solve the problem. Meanwhile, Gaspar García de Paredes, president of the National Council of Private Enterprise, believes that a solution needs to be found to this problem rather quickly, because it could impact the health of the city if waste begins to pile up.

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