A NON-PROFIT organization urged private agricultural businesses to follow law and build buffer zones to protect residential areas as well as riverbanks from harmful pesticides used in their plantations.
Buffer zones are areas designated as a no spray zone between a sensitive area and a crop being sprayed. It often forms a strip of unsprayed paddock, but may also contain a vegetative barrier within it.
Lawyer Mark Peñalver of Interface Development Interventions Inc. (Idis) said on Thursday that private companies should put up these "No spray/chemical zones" to maintain the potability of drinking water sources.
"Most of our banana plantations in the uplands do not have these buffer zones. Some of them has it but do not really meet the standard," Peñalver said.
Without the buffer zones, chemicals used in an agricultural area are carried by the water when it rains directly to residential areas and in our riverbanks. Idis pertains to plantations in Baguio and Marilog Districts.
Peñalver added that buffer zones will act as filter of these chemicals.
"Before they reach our riverbanks and other areas inhabited by men, they were already sipped in by these plants in our buffer zone," he said.
Sumifru, Dole, and Del Monte (pineapple plantation) are among the companies that occupy areas in the uplands planted with bananas and other crops, Peñalver said.
More topics concerning watershed protection will be discussed on June 29 to 30 during the 5th Watershed Stakeholders Summit organized by Idis, Philippine Eagle Foundation, Watershed Management Council, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and Davao City Water District.
The summit aims to provide a venue for policymakers, implementers, and water resource users to discuss different issues as well as appropriate solutions.