Smoke continued to rise yesterday from the sanitary landfill in Navotas, days after a fire broke out last Friday.

The fire smoldered until Sunday, blanketing much of the city and other parts of Metro Manila in acrid smoke. While firefighters reported containing the blaze by Sunday, fire continued beneath the surface, which was harder to put out.

Toxic fumes wafted all the way to Obando, Bulacan, where residents had to be evacuated after health problems such as respiratory difficulties and eye irritations were reported.

The landfill, on a 41.121-hectare island, could handle up to 3,000 tons daily of municipal solid waste. It was operated alongside the three-hectare Vitas Marine Loading Station in Tondo, Manila by Phil Ecology Systems Corp.

It was shut down in August last year after Phileco’s franchise expired and was not renewed. Officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Navotas local government blamed the fire on lapses in the safe closure of the landfill.

An official of the DENR’s Environmental Management Bureau, which is investigating the incident, said initial assessment pointed to the buildup of methane, intensified by extreme heat this dry season, as the cause of the fire.

Protocols for the safe closure and abandonment of a sanitary landfill had not been carried out, the DENR bureau official said, adding that administrative, civil and even criminal charges could be filed if environmental laws are found to have been violated.

It’s the second disaster to hit a sanitary landfill this year. On Jan. 8, a landslide at the Binaliw landfill in Cebu killed 36 people, mostly workers in a materials recovery facility at the site, and injured 18 others.

Initial investigation blamed the accident on a combination of weeks of heavy rainfall saturating the mountain of trash, its structural instability and its operation that was reportedly more akin to an open dump than a sanitary landfill.

There are other landfills across the country, and similar accidents are not unlikely with poor regulation and weak enforcement of laws on waste management.

Apart from investigating the causes and tightening the rules, the government should consider amending laws against garbage incineration to allow for a shift to waste-to-energy or WTE facilities, which convert municipal garbage to electricity, biofuel, reclaimed water and construction materials.

WTE technology has become advanced enough to ensure that the garbage incineration does not cause air pollution. Several countries including China, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam are now using the technology to deal with municipal waste while producing much-needed energy and biofuels. Malaysia is also starting to employ WTE.

With mountains of garbage across the country and energy becoming more expensive, it’s time for the Philippines to consider waste-to-energy.