“NO ONE bathes there anymore,” Dario Tariman, 51, barangay captain of Tabok, Mandaue City, said of the Butuanon River, which bounds his barangay.
“The water has changed color. Sometimes it turns black, other times pink. Maybe there are outfalls there,” he said. There are food processing firms in the area.
Up until he was 13 years old, the river was clean, Tariman recalled. Things changed when a piggery opened, polluting the river. Other businesses followed.
In Barangay Tingub, next to Tabok, barangay secretary Cheryl Suson added garbage and fecal waste to the many reasons for the river’s murky state.
The 10-kilometer Butuanon River starts from the mountains in upper Cebu City, crosses Mandaue City, then drains into the Mactan Channel. Including its major tributaries, the river is some 34.5 kilometers long.
From headwaters in deforested mountains with light agricultural activity, the river flows through residential, commercial and industrial areas, making it a favored receptacle for their wastes.
Butuanon River crosses 10 barangays in Cebu City and 11 in Mandaue City.
But Guadalupe Latonio, president of the Citizens’ League for Ecological Awareness and Responsibility, said 17 Mandaue barangays throw their trash and wastewater into the river. Mandaue’s sanitary landfill, opened last year on the site of its former dumpsite in Barangay Umapad, sits at the mouth of the river.
Worst river
For 30 years, there has been more talk than useful efforts to revive the river, lament residents.
Indeed, last year, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) still called the Butuanon River among the “worst” rivers in the country.
Subdivisions on the Cebu City side of the river, and factories and residences on the Mandaue City side of the river contribute to the river’s pollution.
The subdivisions started mushrooming there in the early 1990s, discharging their wastewater into the river, said Superbalita [Cebu] news editor Roger Vallena, who grew up in Barangay Bacayan, Cebu City. Illegal settlers along the riverbanks compounded the problem.
Due to the pollution, his uncle developed skin problems whenever he crossed the river.
“Butuanon used to be the site of many picnics. Karon luod na kaayong tan-awon. (Now the water looks disgusting),” he said.
Many poor residents who used to get water from wells by the river for drinking because they did not have access to deep wells, have stopped doing so due to the pollution, he said.
Not so dead
Since 1992, the Butuanon River has been declared “biologically dead” by the DENR, or devoid of aquatic life.
But DENR-Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) 7 Regional Director William Cuñado said the term could not be applied to the entire stretch of the river because sampling done in the upper portions of the river in Cebu City showed the water there to still be “within the standards.”
But he said that in the lower portion of the river where the industries are, “it’s slightly polluted” and that domestic waste also converges in some portions there because of the presence of residents. The bulk of the heavy industries are in Mandaue City.
Of the EMB’s 11 river quality monitoring stations in the Butuanon River, four are on the Cebu City side: Binaliw II, Pulangbato Bridge, Sta. Lucia Bridge and Bacayan Bridge. Seven are on the Mandaue side: Canduman Bridge, Pilit HJR, Pilit Treasure Island, Greenhills Outfall, Tingub Bridge, Butuanon Bridge and Camboga-ong Bridge.
The sampling for the third quarter of the year done on July 19 showed that stations that passed the 15 milligrams/liter biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) standards were on the Cebu City side of Butuanon (Binaliw II, Pulangbato and Sta. Lucia). The remaining eight stations breached the standards, as values ranged from 26 mg/L in Bacayan Bridge to 141 mg/L in Camboga-ong Bridge in Barangay Paknaan.
BOD refers to the amount of dissolved oxygen microorganisms use to break down organic matter or waste. Rivers with high BOD are polluted.
The same eight stations failed the three mg/L dissolved oxygen standard for rivers like Butuanon classified as suitable for agriculture, irrigation, livestock watering, and industrial water uses like cooling only.
Aquatic life need dissolved oxygen (DO) for respiration. DO levels decrease with the rise of organic load. The decay of organic waste consumes oxygen.
Canduman Bridge had only two mg/L of DO, while Bacayan Bridge and Pilit HJR had one mg/L. But these were already doing better than the remaining five stations in Mandaue City, which had zero dissolved oxygen.
The EMB 7 tested for five parameters: BOD, DO, pH level, temperature and total suspended solids.
Who’s to blame?
Since at least 2003, EMB 7 officials have claimed that households (which local governments monitor), rather than big industrial firms (which the DENR monitors), account for the bulk of the pollution. But the EMB 7 now says it does not know the types and quantities of waste in the river.
“The one who should do the study on this is the Mandaue City Government, as they should categorize the waste being collected at the Butuanon River,” Cuñado said.
But Mandaue City Environment and Natural Resources Office (Cenro) Officer-in-Charge (OIC) Araceli Barlam said her office, formed only in 2014, also has yet to identify the river’s pollutants.
The City, through Cenro, has committed to update and submit its 10-year Ecological Solid Waste Management Plan this year. The plan will include a Waste Analysis Characterization Study that will give information on the proportions and percentages of wastes.
This might initially cover only solid waste gathered from households and industries, and not necessarily all the types of waste now in the river. But it would be a start, she said.
As for the EMB, Cuñado said it was still trying to determine how much wastewater industrial firms were discharging into the Butuanon River.
Penalized
Cuñado said that with “no conclusive evidence,” the industries along the river could not be considered polluters “because they are compliant by securing the necessary permits.”
But he said the EMB 7 had ordered the closure of industries near the Butuanon before for indiscriminate disposal of wastewater in the river.
Some firms had also been made to pay fines by the DENR’s Pollution Adjudication Board. The penalty for the first offense is P200,000. Repeat offenders may get a bigger fine, he said.
“In Central Visayas, the PAB has ordered a company (not from Butuanon) to pay a million pesos in fines,” he said.
Cuñado said another firm paid penalties for violations relating to its slaughterhouse operations. Now, it is compliant and has its own wastewater treatment facility.
Arm’s length
On insinuations rivers remain polluted because the EMB accepts bribes from polluters, he said: “Masakitan gyud ka ani nga perception. (That is hurtful).” He said they keep their contact with industries to a minimum to avoid perceptions that they are getting too close to the business owners.
“We now depend on the latest technology to monitor the performance of industries that secured the Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC). It also makes our work more efficient since we don’t need to go to the industries to inspect them,” he said.
Operators of environmentally critical projects or in environmentally critical areas must get an ECC from the DENR stating the conditions the project must comply with before it can be implemented.
Cross-checking needed
Establishments with permits from the DENR to discharge wastewater are tracked by the Mandaue Cenro for compliance with the documentary requirements. If they don’t comply within a certain period of time, “we recommend closure pending the compliance of the requirements,” Barlam said.
This year, the Mandaue Cenro issued “an Environmental Conformity Certificate to 31 wastewater dischargers along the Butuanon River, since according to documents submitted, they have shown compliance with DENR standards,” said Barlam, who joined the Cenro only in July.
“Cenro, however, recognizes the need to have equipment capable of testing the water,” so it has obtained approval to buy next year its first wastewater analysis equipment.
This would enable it to determine the types of waste in the river and check the claims establishments make in their submitted reports regarding their discharges.
Despite the Butuanon’s longstanding problems with pollution, the City has yet to penalize anyone for throwing untreated wastewater into the river.
Informal settlers living near the Paknaan Bridge in Mandaue City, complain, for instance, that the water below the bridge turns reddish-brown whenever a food processing firm discharges waste from a substance used to clean the marine product it processes. A slight odor accompanies the discharge, which occurs once or twice a week, they said.
Mandaue Cenro Assistant OIC Placido Jerusalem said establishments caught throwing untreated wastewater into the river would be penalized under the city’s anti-littering ordinance.
Cleaning up
For the failure to clean up a river after polluting it, the Philippine Clean Water Act of 2004 provides the penalty of imprisonment. But Cuñado said no one had ever been imprisoned for this.
He said funds used to clean up and rehabilitate rivers are taken from the department’s Adopt-an-Estero/Water Body program.
“Industries situated along the Butuanon that have committed to the program are required to budget a certain amount for their regular river cleanup programs,” he said.
But joining the program—a joint undertaking by the DENR, local government units, the private sector and the communities along the river—is voluntary.
There is no punishment for failing to meet the commitments. And the schedule of river cleanup activities “depends on the industry,” he said.
The EMB has requested all industrial firms and subdivisions along the Butuanon to join the program. But it has secured only 22 active partners.
There are 60 commercial/industrial firms alone discharging wastewater into the Butuanon River, of which 53 are from Mandaue, and seven from Cebu City.
Asked whether the clean-up drives had been effective in promoting good waste management practices, Cuñado said: “Very effective right after. But as the days pass, the same problem persists. Gamay ra ang manglimpyo pero daghan ang maghugaw-hugaw (Few people clean up, but many pollute), especially informal settlers living along the river.”
“Solid and liquid waste are still prevalent in Butuanon,” he said.
Permit
Under the Clean Water Act, entities that discharge regulated effluents into water bodies should get discharge permits from the DENR. The permit specifies the quantity and quality of effluents the entities may discharge into a particular water body, among other things.
“Subdivisions are required (to get this permit), especially those with approved ECCs. But as to households, especially informal settlers, they are the ones we can’t regulate because we can’t impose them per household,” said Cuñado.
He could not say how many subdivisions along the Butuanon River didn’t get a discharge permit.
Limitations
At Cebu City Hall, Lito Vasquez, executive assistant of the Cebu City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CCENRO), said due to manpower limitations, the CCENRO does not yet have a system to track the subdivisions along rivers in Cebu City and monitor their discharges.
It has also not collected data on the quantities and types of waste in the Butuanon River.
Six years since its creation, CCENRO remains unable to operate as a full department, since “the Cebu City Government already breached the limit for personnel services in its annual budget,” he said.
CCENRO has only seven casuals, including Vasquez, plus five casuals from the City Environmental Sanitation Enforcement Team and some job order personnel.
As for business establishments, the CCENRO is still improving its database on their locations and the environmental program required from them, he said.
City Ordinance 2243 or the “Sustainable Development Ordinance of the City of Cebu” requires business establishments securing a business permit to submit an Environmental Sustainability Action Plan declaring the environmental programs they will implement.
But Vasquez said his office will now require establishments applying for new business permits or renewing such permits to first submit discharge permits from the EMB 7 if they operate along rivers.
“We hope to make this fully operational at the start of 2017,” he said.
Mandaue side
To help prevent waste from getting to the river, the Mandaue City Council recently passed an ordinance requiring industries to compost their own compostable and biodegradable waste. Last Aug. 1, the City also started strictly implementing the Plastic Bag Prohibition Ordinance of 2010 prohibiting retail establishments from providing and using disposable plastic bags and Styrofoam.
But for subdivisions, the Cenro still has to get data from Mandaue City’s Housing and Urban Development Office (Hudo) on those subdivisions that could be polluting the river by not having a septic tank.
Relocation
For riverbank settlers, both Mandaue and Cebu combine information and education campaigns on keeping the premises clean, with apprehension of persons violating anti-littering and garbage segregation ordinances to curb river pollution. But when able, they relocate the settlers.
“We have cleared the easement along the Butuanon River in Barangays Tabok and Paknaan, including the structures under the Butuanon Bridge,” leaving 753 households still occupying the three-meter easement on the Mandaue side of the Butuanon River, said Hudo head Tony Pet Juanico.
Under the Water Code of the Philippines, there should be a three-meter easement from banks, rivers, streams, lakes and seashores in urban areas, for public use.
Juanico said the delay in the transfer of the other settlers was due mainly to the “limited members of the clearing team,” weather conditions, lack of cooperation by the officers and members of the community/homeowners associations, and “misleading of facts made by some groups.”
Of 4,000 families living close to the Butuanon River and Mahiga Creek, 1,200 families had been allotted space in a 6.5-hectare site in Paknaan near the mouth of the Butuanon River and along the Cansaga Bay. But only 415 beneficiaries have moved to the site. The rest refused relocation.
Charlito Rasonable, a resident at the relocation site for two years, said informal settlers resisted moving to the Paknaan site because “dako man ang bayranan diri (the bills are high here).”
Those who acquired lots pay P550/month for the lot, while those who got the house and lot package pay P2,500/month for 25 years, he said.
Butuanon not the priority
For the Cebu City side of Butuanon, Division for the Welfare of the Urban Poor head Genevieve Alcoseba could not give an exact number of riverbank dwellers. For the whole city, though, as of 2013, a total of 4,292 families lived along waterways in 37 barangays.
For 2017, she proposes testing the use of a mid-rise building for the relocation, initially of 70 families. But her priority is the settlers along Mahiga Creek, to address flooding problems caused by their encroachment into outfalls.
For the rest of this year, the division will just conduct community education on not disposing of trash into the river and the dangers of living by waterways, she said.
Water is life
Rivers are a vital source of drinking water to a growing population. Amid the overpumping of groundwater that has already caused saltwater intrusion into Cebu’s freshwater aquifers, water utilities need to tap surface water as an alternative.
But last year, Metropolitan Cebu Water District assistant general manager for operations Astrophil Logarta said it couldn’t tap the surface water from some Cebu rivers, including the Butuanon, because these were too polluted. (Tomorrow: After 20 years, what has the Butuanon River Watershed Management Board achieved?)
(First of three parts)