Doctor presents some inconvenient truths on Baguio’s water
Posted by isl30fvi3w on May 9, 2008
BAGUIO CITY–“Let us not wait for our river to become one of the most polluted like the (Marilao, Meycauayan and Obando river system) in Bulacan,” Dr. Julie Camdas-Cabato, one of Baguio’s leading physicians and environmentalists, pleaded last Earth Day.
She was pleading for the restoration of the Sagudin-Balili River during a water forum at the
multi-purpose center of city hall. She had with her a list of local “inconvenient truths”, topped by the fact that the water body that forms from Baguio is already polluted.
The central business district is the biggest polluter, she said. The Baguio Water District’s deep wells within the Balili tributaries pump up 12,000 cubic meters daily, she added.
She has more:
-The Baguio sewer system has reached its designed capacity for 8,600 to 9,000 cubic meter per day.
-Fifty nine percent of residents do not pay the sewer system fee.
-There is no comprehensive data base on the state of the city’s sewer system and sanitation infrastructure.
“To address these issues is a daunting challenge for all citizens,” she admitted. “They seem insurmountable especially when you go on the ground, but with courage and hope we can face the challenges.”
She noted the renewed efforts of some barangays within the headwaters to clean their portions of the tributaries: Gibraltar under punong barangay Orlando Flores, M. Roxas under Rogelio de Vera, Cabinet Hill-Teachers Camp under Jaime Rillorta, Sto. Nino (Slaughterhouse) under Ramon Ramos, and North Sanitary Camp led by punong barangay Virgilio Orca Jr.
In their reports, some of the barangay officials admitted their initial clean-ups seemed ineffective but will continue. Flores earlier brushed aside a suggestion to tap students for the work, saying residents would be more encouraged not to dump their trash once they experience retrieving their own waste.
Gibraltar is on a survey to pinpoint houses without septic tanks and with sewer lines dumping waste into the tributary straddling the barangay.
Flores hopes the data would revive and support the barangay’s request years back for the city to consider connecting some septic tanks to the main sewer lines. As the treatment plant has already overshot it capacity, he said building satellite plants or cluster septic tanks may be the alternatives.
“The need to put up more treatment plants should already be on the drawing board within the year instead of having it linger like our problem at the Irisan dumpsite,” Cabato said.
Cabato, secretary-general of the Baguio Regreening Movement, an inter-agency group at the forefront of the city’s environmental concerns, recently headed a committee looking into the state of the river, leading to a tie-up with the barangays.
“Let us not wait for epidemics to happen, like it did in other parts of the country,” Cabato appealed.
Her reference to the dubious distinction of the Marilao-Meycauayan-Obando river system was based on a listing last year of the most polluted places in the developing world by the Blacksmith Institute, an environmental watchdog based in New York.
Blacksmith said the river “is home to hundreds of thousands of people and numerous industries, most of which pump their wastewater untreated into the river. Carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, lea, and human sewage are just a few components of this toxic stew, which the local population relies on as a source of domestic and agricultural water.”
The institute has teamed up with other agencies to study the extent of pollution, towards coming up with a river rehabilitation plan.
The institute is encouraging nominations for “the most polluted places” this year.
Unlike Marilao, Baguio can’t blame any neighbor for the pollution of the Sagudin-Balili River which begins from its rivulets and creeks. – Ramon Dacawi.
