CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Tasked with striking out a river system in the list of a New York based environmental group as among the world’s “dirtiest”, 100 new anti-pollution patrollers now roam the Marilao- Meycauayan-Obando river system in Bulacan to identify and run after culprits.
Rustico De Belen, chief of the Bulacan environment and natural resources office, said the trained patrollers regularly ply the river system on boats bought by the provincial government so as to bar households from using the river system as garbage dump.
The patrollers are also identifying houses whose septic tanks and drainpipes run directly to the river,” De Belen said, noting that households are major contributors to the pollution of the river system.
He quoted Gov. Wilhelmino Sy-Alvarado as saying that “these anti-pollution marshals will serve as the eyes of the government in protecting the rivers. We need to do our share in the preservation of our nature in order to avoid the backlash of nature. We only have one earth. So we should protect it, before it’s too late.”
“Several factories have also been already shut down amid reports that the river system is contaminated with battery discharges and metal and tannery residues,” De Belen also noted.
In a report, the New York-based environmental group Blacksmith Institute listed the river system in Bulacan as among the world’s 30 dirtiest.
The group noted that “industrial waste is haphazardly dumped into the Marilao, Meycauayan and Obando river system, a source of drinking and agricultural water supplies for the 250,000 people living in and around this suburb of Manila.”
“The river system is extremely polluted due to wastes received from tanneries, gold and precious metals refineries, and legacy lead smelting waste, and numerous municipal dumpsites. Substantial contamination also results from small-scale lead recycling facilities along the river and from the many tanneries that dump untreated hexavalent chromium-laced wastewater into the river,” the group said.
De Belen lamented the report, as he stressed that the creation of the patrol system at the river system was also in response to it under the Sagip Ilog project launched by Alvarado.
“Also part of Bulacan’s nonstop thrusts on environmental campaigns, 10,000 bamboo shoots, mahogany, narra and gemelina trees were subsequently planted along the riverbanks of Bustos town to harbor the Angat River, “De Belen added.
He said Alvarado has called for vigilance among his constituents “to help erase the name of the Marilao-Meycauyan-Obando river system in the list of international environmental organization Blacksmith Institute’s World’s Dirty 30”.
The Blacksmith Institute said that the “dumping of toxic wastes into the river has had a severe effect on the health of the local population with complaints of nausea, eye irritation, and various respiratory ailments.
“The river also feeds directly into the Manila Bay, and its effluents contaminate local fishing areas, further endangering health,” it also noted.
But Blacksmith Institute also noted “there has been considerable local effort to deal with the main sources of pollution, resulting in the creation of a coordinating body to encourage and guide clean up of this river.”
“This stakeholder group, which has been instigated and supported by Blacksmith, includes senior representatives of the federal government, the local municipality, industries from the area and community groups. A process has been started to collaboratively implement private and public remediation efforts over the next several years and efforts are ongoing to obtain national and international financial assistance,” it added.
–Ding Cervantes
