Friday, February 29, 2008 Peña: Cleaning Up a Polluted River By Rox Peña E-SSUE
THE Blacksmith Institute (BI), an international environmental group, has named a waterway in Bulacan as one of the 30 most polluted places in the world in 2007. This verdict, I believe, is contentious.
There are thousands of polluted places in this world and I doubt if BI can visit or even identify all of them.
But I'm glad the government decided to fix the problem instead of disputing the findings.
Cited as one of the "Dirty Thirty" is the Marilao-Meycauayan-Obando (MMO) river system.
This waterway is 55 kilometers in length traversing the cities of Caloocan, Valenzuela, and Malabon in Metro Manila and San Jose Del Monte in Bulacan and the towns of Meycauayan, Marilao, Obando and Sta. Maria, also in Bulacan.
The institute said the river system is extremely polluted due to waste received from tanneries, gold and precious metal refineries and legacy lead smelting waste, and numerous municipal dumpsites.
They added that substantial contamination also results from small-scale lead recycling facilities along the river and from the many tanneries that dump untreated hexavalent chromium-laced wastewater into the river.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) commenced the rehabilitation of the waterway last February 20, 2008.
As a start, DENR Secretary Lito Atienza declared the polluted river channel as a water quality management area to be managed by a governing board. This scheme is a provision of the Clean Water Act.
The governing board, composed of representatives of local government units (LGU's), government agencies, private groups, academe and non-government organizations (NGO's) and chaired by the DENR Secretary, will be responsible for the formulation of an action plan which will provide a focused intervention to address the water quality problems in the MMO river system.
Among BI's "Dirty Thirty," the MMO waterway is the only one from the Southeast Asian region.
There are two locations in Africa, five from China, 10 in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (five of which are in Russia), seven in Latin America and Caribbean and five in South Asia (four of which are in India). It's good the Bulacan river is not in the Top Ten list.
The BI's process of identifying polluted areas begins with a nomination from independent research groups, from their country representative and partner organizations or from the internet through their website.
A review and research are then conducted by an advisory board composed of technical experts.
A site verification follows, after which a site dossier is created and published in their website.
The BI then offers solutions and extend help through technical research, strategic assistance, networking and financial support.
Now, is there hope for the MMO River? It's worthwhile to look at a similar project done in the Singapore River and Kallang Basin.
In the 1960s to 1980s, as trading and business activities expanded around the waterways, uncontrolled discharge of all types of waste and wastewater flowed into the River and Basin causing them to be highly polluted.
The sources of water pollution included pig wastes from pig and duck farms, street hawkers, riverine activities, vegetable wholesale activities and others.
A clean-up project was started in 1977 and it took ten years to complete.
The clean up transformed a river, which was filth and stench and heavily polluted to one where today aquatic life is thriving.
Today, the River and Basin are used for recreational purposes such as boating, fishing, and river cruise, adding to a higher quality of life for Singaporeans.
How did they do it? There was massive housing development. More than 26,000 families living in unsewered premises and 2,800 backyard and cottage industries were resettled.
Street hawkers were moved to food centers and polluting activities were phased out.
There was resettlement of squatters, industrial workshops, backyard trades, industries and farmers.
The government can learn something from this experience.
