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Friday, September 19, 2003
Toilets lack perils water
By Karen M. Flores
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
ASIDE from deforestation and industrial waste, a survey of Cebu City found that the lack of toilet facilities here is also threatening Cebu’s water supply.
According to a reference material on Metro Cebu’s groundwater published by the Cebu Uniting for Sustainable Water (CUSW), among other organizations, a fourth of the city’s households dump their fecal waste directly into the ground.
And even among those who have toilets with septic tanks, a percentage of them drain fecal material from the tanks directly to the ground.
The survey, conducted by the Cebu City Health Statistics and Surveillance Office in December 1999, found that 11 percent of the city’s households have no toilets.
Among those with toilets, 14.3 percent have no septic tanks while it is not known how many of the existing tanks are “bottomless” or are not “bottom-cemented chambers.”
It is estimated that households alone drain 95,320 cubic meters of “bacteria and virus-loaded, chemically-laden liquid directly or indirectly into its precious, diminishing groundwater daily.”
This does not even include yet sewage or liquid waste from markets, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, malls and factories, the reference material said.
Because of all the waste dumped into the ground and in rivers, only water supplied by the Metropolitan Cebu Water District is considered safe in Metro Cebu.
In the national scene, Environment Undersecretary Demetrio Ignacio Jr. said 10 million Filipinos have no sustainable source of drinking water while 13 million have no access to sanitation facilities.
Ignacio also noted that because of water pollution, 80 percent of all diseases in developing countries are traced to unsafe water.
Water-related diseases kill more than five million people every year or about 13,888 everyday.
Ignacio spoke at the Capitol social hall yesterday morning during the first Cebu City Water Congress that marked the sixth celebration of the Water Conservation Month.
(September 19, 2003 issue)
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