DAVAO City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio cannot help but compare clean air of the city to its dirty coastal waters as she received on behalf of the city on Monday, November 6, the first clean air award given by Clean Air Philippines.
"Limpyo ang atong hangin pero ang atong dagat hugaw kaayo bag-o lang mi nag-launch sa bantay dagat. Grabe kadamak ang mga tao, wrapper sa noodles, wrapper sa sachet sa shampoo, wrapper sa candy tanan, naa diha sa dagat (Our air is very clean but our coastal waters are very dirty. We just launched our Bantay Dagat. This habit is very disgusting, wrappers of noodles and candies, shampoo sachets, all kinds of garbage are in the sea)," she said.
She said she would want to see an improvement on the garbage disposal habits of the people in the next six months.
"We recently declared the first and third Saturdays of every month as coastal clean-up time," she said.
She also encouraged clean air advocates to be Bantay Dagat Volunteers.
As to the award, she attributed this to the compliance of Dabawenyos with local laws that support the Philippine clean air act such as solid waste management ordinance the firecracker ban, the anti-smoking ordinance, anti-smoke belching ordinance, which were initiated by former mayor now President Rodrigo Duterte, and which she just continued.
She also added that the City Environment and National Resources Office tasked to spearhead the implementation of the city's environmental management program monitors pollution sources in coordination with government agencies such as Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Environmental Management Board (DENR-EMB) to implement measures to prevent and control smoke pollution.
Duterte-Carpio said that the anti-smoke belching unit of the CENRO as the primary enforcement unit of the city ordinance 02-8006 or the anti-smoke belching ordinance of the Davao City regularly conducts random road tests on the emission levels of vehicles with corresponding fines and penalties, that include the confiscation of vehicles in violation of allowable emission standards.
"Last year alone emission testing was conducted to 303,215 motor vehicles in the city," she said.
She said that since air pollution is crucial component in air quality, in 2016, Cenro propagated and produced 306,828 seedlings from the six nurseries situated in the three districts of Davao City.
She said that the city will make sure that the industries comply with air standards with active participation in multipartite monitoring teams.
"I am happy to note that we still pass the World Health Organization air standards despite our Coal plant. I did not support that but I understand that we need the energy source, otherwise mag-rotational brownout," she said.
She added that another incoming issue is the putting up of the waste to energy to the city, since there is a need to plan for the solid waste and management in the three to five years of the city.
"Unofficially, the Japanese Government already committed to give a grant to Davao City for a waste to energy plant. Ten of us are going to Japan to check out their technology with regard to waste to energy, specifically Kitakyushu City in Japan," she said.
She added that since there are NGOs who opposed the WTE plants, two of them, specifically from Interface Development Interventions will join the ten-man team that will go to Japan.
"I allotted two for them to come with us and also look at the technology to give us a review of what they think," she said.