Cebu City councilors say they were not furnished DENR 7 documents on Binaliw landfill’s limited reopening after the Jan. 8 deadly trash slide. Safety, transparency, and timing remain in dispute.
CEBU City councilors are raising alarms over the way updates on the Binaliw landfill’s limited reopening were handled, asking whether safety scrutiny is being diluted after the Jan. 8 trash slide that killed 36 people.
Councilor Joel Garganera said Mayor Nestor Archival received communication from DENR 7 regarding the restricted resumption of operations at the Prime Integrated Waste Solutions (PWS) Cebu facility, but the city council was not furnished the key documents.. For Garganera, the problem is not only procedural—it affects the council’s ability to do due diligence on a site still under regulatory and public scrutiny.
“I am disappointed that the mayor received something from the DENR, but we did not.. He did not even send it to us.. Without sending your technical people for due diligence, especially since we are supposed to be looking at safety,” Garganera said during an interview on SunStar Cebu’s Beyond the Headline on Thursday, April 30, 2026.
The Jan.. 8 collapse prompted a cease and desist order (CDO) and triggered investigations by national and local authorities, focusing on structural stability, waste volume management, and compliance with environmental standards.. Since the incident, the facility has remained subject to reviews, with DENR’s Environmental Management Bureau 7 assessing conditions for any possible resumption—an issue that, according to council members, should be handled with maximum transparency and clear documentation.
That tension resurfaced during an executive session of the City Council, when councilors reportedly expressed surprise after learning that PWS Cebu had begun limited operations, based on a partial lifting of the CDO.. In response to the concerns, DENR 7 Solid Waste Management Chief John Roy Kyamko clarified that any partial lifting would apply only to a designated interim cell, and not to the entire landfill facility.. He said operations, as described by DENR 7, are tied to environmental safeguards.
PWS representative Niño Abellana Jr.. added that limited operations were based on regulatory clearance linked to amendments to the facility’s environmental compliance certificate and its interim cell design.. He said the site was operating under controlled conditions and in close coordination with regulators.
Still, Garganera said the council remains uncertain about what exactly has been authorized, how the safeguards are being implemented, and what the timeline looks like—especially given that the facility’s premises have not changed.. He questioned how a CDO could be partially lifted while investigations connected to the fatal collapse are ongoing.
There is a practical reason council members are pressing for details.. When a landfill transitions from a shutdown posture to a controlled restart, the public’s lived experience doesn’t pause—residents still deal with garbage traffic, odors, and the constant pressure of waste management decisions.. Garganera argued that nearby communities deserve timely information so authorities can prepare disaster response planning, traffic measures, and scheduling—rather than expecting residents to absorb the impacts while oversight bodies operate in the dark.
From an accountability standpoint, the disagreement also points to a trust gap in the flow of technical information between agencies and local governance.. If the city council’s oversight role is to protect public welfare, councilors say they need the documentation and the chance to validate conditions through technical representation.. In this case, Garganera’s frustration was not about receiving daily operational logs, but about being kept out of a process that he described as moving well beyond “limited” in its real-world consequences.
For now, DENR 7 maintains that the partial lifting covers only a controlled interim cell and does not amount to a full reopening of the landfill.. Meanwhile, the City Council says it will continue pushing for complete documentation and coordination on the facility’s operational status and rehabilitation—because for many residents, “limited reopening” may still feel like reopening when the ground, the waste, and the risks are all part of the same location.