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Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Purzuelo: Calling for support in clean-up and rehab
By Melvin Purzuelo
Rise Convenor
WE CALL on technologists, scientists and engineers to provide practical solutions and operational support for community-based clean-up and rehabilitation activities. Locally available absorbent materials (rice straws, corn cobs, jute sacks, saw dusts, etc.) have been used as indigenous oil-spill booms to contain and collect oil from shores off Guimaras and the towns of Ajuy and Concepcion in Northern Iloilo.
Here are some problems we're encountering now:
1. Chicken feathers smell bad - we need to reduce the smell so we can use these feathers otherwise we'll just add to the bunker oil fumes.
2. Hairs would take very long time to decompose not to mention the chemical treatments made before these were cut that could affect other life forms like sea grasses and mangoves - with no less than Pres. GMA pitching for the gathering of hairs, we expect these coming soon in very huge volumes.
3. Immediate disposal of oil-coated debris now stacked along the shores as oil leacheate could contaminate shallow groundwaters - there are suggestions to make these into fuel (briquetted) or with oil extracted these could made into organic fertilizers for bio-intensive vegetable gardening.
4. During the habagat season the fishing communities of Guimaras are greatly dependent on gleaning (panginhas) along the seagrass and coral reef areas for food and livelihood. Vegetable gardening could be an alternative to gleaning, but the problem in Guimaras is the very limited land available with large portions of limestone rocks. We need technologies and capacity-building activities to enable communities to plant vegetables over these rocky areas.
We need help to promote initiatives that could assist communities recover fast from this disaster in a dignified manner with other people's utmost respect. Huwag natin silang gawing mga janitors sa panlalason na nangyari sa kanilang kabuhayan!
We will have a meeting on Tuesday (Aug. 29), 3 PM at the SOS headquarters in the BFAR Bldg., Iloilo Fishing Port Complex to discuss probable technical ideas that will be applied in the communities. We welcome your suggestions and recommendations or if you can attend the meeting please do so.
Marami pong salamat
(August 30, 2006 issue)
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