THE Butuanon River suffered every indignity. Industrial facilities discharged partially treated and untreated wastewater. Informal settlers by the riverbanks contributed their completely untreated septic waste, and that of the dogs, chickens and pigs they raised. Silt from quarries and development sites came with storm water, and trash lined 200 meters of the riverbank courtesy of the city’s dumpsite located at the river’s mouth.
On account of its polluted state, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) declared the river “biologically dead” in 1992. Yet, inhabitants by the river continued to use the water for bathing, laundering and water supply, according to the fact sheet of the Butuanon River Watershed Management Project made by the University of San Carlos Water Resources Center Foundation Inc. (USC-WRCFI).
Protecting the watershed
Concerned about the risk of the river’s further degradation, the Mandaue City Government sought the help of the United States Asia Environmental Partnership (AEP) to establish an organization to manage and protect the watershed within Mandaue City’s boundaries.
The result was the creation of the Butuanon River Watershed Management Board (BRWMB) on Aug. 29, 1996, during the administration of Mandaue City Mayor Alfredo Ouano.
The board was composed of the congressmen of two Cebu districts; and representatives from the local government units (LGU) of Mandaue and Cebu cities; DENR, Department of Science and Technology (DOST), Department of the Interior and Local Government; the Mandaue City Health Office, the Mandaue City Division of the Department of Education, Culture and Sports; the barangay captain of Paknaan (to represent the villages); Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD); University of San Carlos (USC) Water Resources Center, Water Laboratory and Department of Biology; Environmental Quality Committee; non-government organization Citizens’ League for Ecological Awareness and Responsibility (Clear); industrial firms San Miguel Corp. and the Butuanon River Industrial Community (Bric); and the US AEP and US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
But 20 years later, the river is still polluted.
“Several studies conducted by the USC-Biology Department, Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) 7 and others indicated that the Butuanon River water and sediment within the Mandaue City area is highly polluted chemically, physically and biologically since 1995 to the present,” said the Terms of Reference for the Butuanon River Watershed Restoration Plan and Detailed Engineering Design of Measures Project that USC-WRCFI director and manager of special projects Dr. Fe Walag presented to the board last November.
So what happened?
Industrial firms blamed
On March 8, 1997, the BRWMB entered into a memorandum of agreement with Bric, the 33 industrial firms discharging wastewater into the river, to comply with the DENR’s effluent standards by the end of 1998. Each firm would have to put up the required wastewater treatment facility (WTF).
Only four firms then had WTFs that complied with the DENR’s Class D effluent standards.
Butuanon is a Class D river, suitable for agriculture, irrigation, livestock watering, and for industrial water supply class II only, like cooling.
Based on EMB 7 data, 60 commercial or industrial firms discharge wastewater into the Butuanon, of which 53 are in Mandaue City and seven in Cebu City.
“But considering the watershed configuration of the river, there could be more,” said engineer Ramir Francis Silva, president of the Pollution Control Association of the Philippines Inc. (Pcapi) 7.
Of the 60 firms, 13 still had no discharge permits as of May, Silva said.
“The most common alibi is the financial aspects. Some could still be ongoing with their installation. They may lack space or have no capabilities to manage their WTFs or sewage treatment plants,” he said.
Treatment facilities
Bric president Antonio Yuri Yap said of the 53 firms in Mandaue, 33 were big firms.
“Big industries already have wastewater treatment facilities,” he said. “But some companies are not using these properly. They bypass their facility and directly discharge their waste into the river, or the canal, where it flows into the river. Or they use it sometimes only.”
The reason is the high operating cost of the facility.
“Depending on the quality of the pollutant they produce, it would cost P35 to P50 per cubic meter for wastewater treatment. If the company has 100 cubic meters (of wastewater) a day, that’s P3,500 a day or P100,000 a month. That’s even small. Some firms throw 1,000 cubic meters of wastewater a day,” he said.
Yap said the major contributors of pollutants were the food processors, including those making food ingredients, because they use a lot of water.
For firms that operate slaughterhouses, he said the question to ask would be where the water used to wash off the waste from the chickens and pigs goes.
EMB 7 Regional Director William Cuñado confirmed that “the main culprit when it comes to polluting the river is when companies are not using their WTF due to operational cost.”
Other companies’ systems might also not be efficient enough to meet the environmental standards, he said.
Cuñado urged firms to use their WTFs and recycle, instead of discard, their wastewater.
Backsliders
“During my time, we were able to convince 80 percent of the industries to control their wastewater by treating them,” Yap said. But after that, he learned that some were no longer using their facilities properly.
Yap said he last attended a BRWMB meeting in 2011, when he was still with Shemberg, a food processor and exporter of carrageenan.
The board was later reconstituted, with Bric’s membership in the board replaced by Pcapi 7, the group of pollution control officers—a move that dismayed USC-WRCFI’s Walag.
“Pcapi is very broad. The representative is not directly involved in pollution (of the river), unlike before when Bric was there,” she said.
Undermanned
Yap said companies also exploited the limitations of the EMB 7.
The EMB conducts inspections only once or twice a year because it is undermanned. So when they come, that’s when the companies use their WTFs, he said.
Only 15 people are assigned to monitor the compliance of Cebu’s companies and subdivisions with the requirements for the discharge of treated wastewater, EMB’s Cuñado admitted, so they just “maximize everybody.”
“Instead of fielding our personnel, we coordinate with the industries by monitoring their wastewater treatment facilities through CCTV so we minimize our contact with them,” he said.
Quarterly reports
Firms are required to submit quarterly online self-monitoring reports (SMR) on their monthly lab results analysis coming from an EMB-accredited third party laboratory “indicating water quality values on required parameters like Biochemical Oxygen Demand, Total Suspended Solids, Chemical Oxygen Demand, Coliform Bacterial Count, Oil & Grease and other parameters,” Pcapi’s Silva said.
The EMB 7 also requires “SMRs to attach the electric and water consumption bills as basis for the counterchecking by the agency on the declared values contained in the SMRs,” he said.
The penalty for non-submission of the SMR is P10,000 per report not submitted.
Cuñado said the EMB can tell, through the SMRs, how much water the companies are using for waste treatment and how much waste they are disposing.
“If we find that the wastewater they disposed is too much, but their water consumption is too low, then we call their attention,” he said.
Board blues
In the beginning, the Mandaue City government called regular monthly BRWMB meetings.
“Later, it was just us at the Bric that continued our meetings, to help other industries in Mandaue,” Yap said. “We helped them in the design of their treatment facilities.”
At environmental group Clear, president Guadalupe Latonio was so frustrated at the lack of progress in rehabilitating the Butuanon River that she resigned from the BRWMB in late 1998.
In 1999, Mayor Thadeo Ouano, Alfredo’s son, took the reins of the BRWMB from Councilor Alfonso Albaño. But the board still lay dormant for 10 years until its revival by Mayor Jonas Cortes on Sept. 30, 2008, with the Large Water Users Organization added as member.
Common facility
With the high cost of putting up a wastewater treatment facility—it cost a medium-sized chicken processor P5 million to put up such a facility in 1997—the EPA had come in with a proposal for a study to put up a common facility that could be shared by firms that could not afford to put up individual treatment plants.
Clear was the lead organization in this EPA project, said Latonio, who explained that a study was needed because different industries had different types of waste.
“The EPA was set to make the study. Everybody (in the BRWMB) was eager about the wastewater treatment. The Washington office of EPA was already eager to give us their money,” she said of the events of 1998.
But the LGU did not show enough willingness to support the project, so the EPA backed out, she said.
Other partners
Clear went on to work with other partners to help reduce the production of trash that might end up in rivers. Latonio was also persuaded to return to the BRWMB later.
In 1999, Clear encouraged Barangay Casili residents to practice waste reduction, reuse and recycling, in part by teaching them to make compost, a project funded by AustraliaAid. But if not supervised, the residents would not practice what they had learned on their own, she said.
Even with recycling as an option, she acknowledged, the residents continued to dump trash in the river.
“It’s the role of the LGUs to provide public boxes for residents to put their trash in,” Latonio said.
But while the local government units did provide public boxes for trash, these disappeared.
“During the time of Thadeo Ouano, there were bins, with wheels. But the residents took them home so they could be used to collect rainwater. So Mayor Jonas Cortes took back the ones that were left, since they were not used for their intended purpose,” Latonio said.
Cortes was mayor from May 2007 to May 2016.
Not serious
Latonio said as a BRWMB member, she tried to give suggestions on how to clean up the Butuanon River. But whenever she did, she was told, “There is already a program for that.”
“I think nobody’s really serious about it. The last time I attended a meeting was three years ago. Wa na gyud mi magpakita (We did not show up again). Wa na sad mi nila tawga. Gisamokan tingali. (They also stopped calling us. Maybe they found us a nuisance),” she said.
In April, Angel Alcantara of the BRWMB secretariat said that just like Bric, Clear was among the groups that was no longer part of the board when it was reconstituted.
Based on Ordinance 13-2014-889 approved on March 3, 2014 “creating the Butuanon River Watershed Management Board,” she said the members of the present board were the MCWD, Cebu City mayor (represented by his planning officer), USC-WRCFI, Pcapi 7, DOST, DENR 7, EMB 7, the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (Cenro), Mandaue’s engineering and planning offices, and the Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
What about a representative for the barangays?
“For the last five years, no barangay captain has been invited, except if there’s illegal extraction (or quarrying), for example, happening, so he can be made aware that this is illegal,” she said.
Last week, she said the board had not met since Gabriel Luis Quisumbing became Mandaue mayor in May. An executive order would still have to be issued to determine who the members of the board would now be.
The Mandaue mayor chairs the BRWMB.
Pcapi
Pcapi 7 said it had accomplished much during its three years on the board.
It sponsored the resolution for the City Council, through Association of Barangay Councils president Ernie Manatad, to come up with an ordinance “to make the Butuanon River a non-quarry and non-extractive zone,” Silva said.
Quarrying destroys the habitat of marine life and increases sedimentation, promoting the transfer of metals in the soil to the water, contaminating it.
But Manatad said the ordinance was passed in 2014 in response to the landslides in the riverbanks, resulting from the holes quarrying created, that endangered the residents.
“Quarrying also destroys the natural flow of the water,” he said.
While the ordinance had served as a deterrent to some, Manatad said many still engaged in illegal quarrying in Barangays Canduman and Cabancalan, “all the way down to Maguikay” because commercial firms selling sand and gravel buy these from them.
Easement
Pcapi also sponsored a resolution for the clear demarcation of the three-meter or more easement of the riverbanks, and a resolution for the development of a definite physical planning and design of the Butuanon riverbanks with cost estimates on the banks’ improvement design, which “engineering plan is now subject to bidding at the LGU,” Silva said.
With this design, the river would no longer be used as a disposal area, he said.
A linear park will be developed on the riversides, covering a 1.5-kilometer stretch from Cambogaong Bridge to Paknaan Bridge, after Mandaue City relocated illegal settlers in the area and restored the three-meter easement required of rivers under the Water Code of the Philippines, said Lemuel Canastra, manager of MCWD’s Environment and Water Resources Department.
Pcapi is also looking into setting up a communal wastewater treatment facility jointly owned by the industry for those firms that cannot install their own facility for lack of funds, space and technical capability.
As for MCWD, Canastra said that during its time in the board, its Watershed and Environmental Management Division had been “instrumental in the organizing of environmental and natural resources officers,” leading to Mandaue City’s creation of its Cenro.
Continuity
So why is the river still polluted?
“Without the concerted effort from all sectors, it would be difficult to clean the river,” Yap said. “Even if the industry complies, if the others don’t, it still won’t work.”
Pcapi’s Silva said political will was needed to address the issues of informal settlers living by the riverbanks and illegal quarrying, and to enforce the laws against dumping of waste.
Walag and Yap raised the importance of the river’s uninterrupted management and monitoring.
Yap said that under an LGU, when politicians in the board are no longer reelected, or the mayor does not consider the environment a priority, the board’s activities would be disrupted. So he proposed privatizing the BRWMB and hiring an executive director to manage the river’s rehabilitation.
Walag also wants an executive director with technical capability.
She expressed frustration that a five-year watershed management plan was already there but was not implemented because with the change in LGU officials, “the new officials came up with their own plan.”
“Cebu City has a River Management Council, but there is also no progress,” she said.
“This is not a part-time job. If you are really serious about the restoration and improvement of Butuanon River, you should put full-time personnel there,” she said.
Walag said that last year, Mayor Cortes had already budgeted some P13 million for the river’s restoration. But this was not spent. No bidding for the study consultants took place because the local officials got busy preparing for the May 2016 elections.
Mandaue Cenro Officer-in-Charge (OIC) Araceli Barlam said the P13.5 million is for hard infrastructure and the creation of the Terms of Reference for the river rehabilitation project to be implemented next year.
Turnover
Over in Cebu City, Cebu City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CCENRO) executive assistant Lito Vasquez knows well the difficulties of not having permanent staff.
In the last six years, the CCENRO has had five OICs, he said. He himself is just a casual employee.
“What compounds the problem is the lack of turnover from the previous personnel of CCENRO and the previous secretariat of the Cebu City Rivers Management Council, a multi-stakeholder body under the Office of the Mayor,” Vasquez said of the challenges of his office in setting priorities.
Reelectionist Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama was defeated last May by archrival Tomas Osmeña.
Other challenges
Pcapi’s Silva acknowledged other obstacles to rehabilitating the river.
“The funding aspects to improve the banks’ aesthetics and landscape, sewerage system, solid waste screening and impounding, meaning the cleaning up and rehabilitating of a dead river will be very costly as experienced in the Pasig River Program,” he said.
The Pasig River Environmental Management and Rehabilitation Sector Development Program alone, financed by the Asian Development Bank in 2000, cost P10.94 billion, the bank’s 2010 completion report on a policy loan to support policy reforms, an investment loan to support the investments, and a technical assistance grant for capacity building showed.
Silva said people also need to change their behavior and their psyche, so they will see the river not as a sink but as the God-given resource that it is.
In due time
The MCWD’s Canastra is more patient with the pace of Butuanon’s rehabilitation.
He said it took about 50 years to rehabilitate the Murasaki River in Kitakyushu City, Japan, while the BRWMB has only been around for less than half that time.
During this period, the Butuanon Water Quality Management Area governing board was created, local officials and barangay residents became more environmentally aware, and the Integrated Water Resources Management policy became part of the Cebu Provincial Environmental Code, he said.
On criticisms about Mandaue City’s seriousness in cleaning up the Butuanon River, Cenro’s Barlam had this to say: “Criticisms and perception of the level of seriousness are all relative. But the facts are, the river has Class D water quality and polluters are still present. Cenro will be implementing a holistic Community-Based Natural Resource Management Program in the entire city of Mandaue in order to revive, restore, rehabilitate and conserve the existing natural resources of the city.”
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IN 2013, citing the deterioration of the Butuanon River, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) 7, through its line agency Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) 7, proposed to designate the Butuanon River Watershed as a water quality management area (WQMA).
The WQMA would bring stakeholders together to protect the river and its tributaries, so that the river conforms to its Class D classification or improves to a higher classification.
On May 29, 2014, the DENR designated the Butuanon River Watershed as a WQMA, created its governing board to oversee its management, and gave some 17 barangays in Cebu City, 13 in Mandaue City and two in Consolacion town political/administrative jurisdiction over the WQMA.
The WQMA covers the Butuanon River and its tributaries within the WQMA boundary.
Chaired by the EMB 7 regional director, the board has 28 members: a representative each from the National Water Resources Board, Governor’s Office, Regional Development Council 7, Offices of the mayors of Cebu and Mandaue Cities and Consolacion town; as well as from 13 government offices in Central Visayas, including the agriculture, and public works and highways departments, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and National Irrigation Administration.
Also included are representatives from the Association of Barangay Captains; and the private sector, like the Metropolitan Cebu Water District, Pollution Control Association of the Philippines Inc., two schools, and the Mandaue and Cebu business chambers.
Among its functions, the board will review and adopt the WQMA action plan drafted by the EMB 7; help local governments in preparing the compliance scheme to implement the WQMA action plan and drafting local legislation to promote environmental protection in the Butuanon River Watershed; and undertake projects to complement national and local water pollution control initiatives.
But more than two years after the WQMA was designated, there is still no WQMA action plan to address the river’s water quality issues and problems in the area.
EMB 7 Regional Director William Cuñado said the WQMA had already helped in terms of awareness and the sharing of resources from different agencies.
“Industries are now aware of Butuanon’s importance. But tangible results? We are still checking if there are tangible results,” he said.
(Second of three parts)