THE rehabilitation of Manila Bay remains its top priority in the next two years, Secretary Roy Cimatu of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources said Tuesday as he looked to the new year about to begin.
The rehabilitation process began in January, 2019, he said, and “our efforts to restore Manila Bay are in full swing and we hope to sustain the momentum of restoring it to its former glory in the coming years.”
It was a statement of hope that goes with the start of a new year. But, lest we become too hopeful, we must not forget that when Secretary Cimatu first came face to face with the Manila Bay problem, he said it would take ten years to clean it up.
President Duterte ordered the rehabilitation of Manila Bay after the tourist island of Boracay was cleaned up in six months. But the Manila Bay problem is a hundred times bigger than that of Boracay.
This tourist island was visited by 1.6 million tourists in the first nine months of 2019, staying an average of three days. In comparison, Metro Manila has 12 million permanent residents plus another 4 million workers in the daytime coming from surrounding provinces. And all the time, their sewage has been dumped into the 203 esteros and other streams and rivers flowing into the Pasig, on to Manila Bay.
Sewage also flows into the bay from towns facing it in Bataan, Pampanga, Bulacan, and Cavite. Hundreds of hog farms have long been disposing of their wastes into these rivers.
The two Metro Manila water concessionaires were supposed to provide sewage treatment facilities, collecting fees all these years from water customers, but it is only now that they are announcing plans for sewerage treatment plants that have been needed for years. The end result of this entire situation is a Manila Bay that is so polluted that it is unsafe for swimming or any other water contact sports. Every time it floods anywhere in Metro Manila, the people are warned to avoid wading in the flood waters, lest they get infected with leptospirosis or other ailments.
Secretary Cimatu said that its rehabilitation plan for the bay is in its first phase – cleanup and water quality monitoring. The second phase will be relocation of millions now living along its river banks. The third was will be education, protection, and sustainment.
The second phase alone will take not only years but also billions of pesos to carry out. With only two years left in the Duterte administration, the major part of the rehabilitation of Manila Bay will have to be carried out by the next two administrations.
We hope that these next administrations will have the political will to carry on what President Duterte and Secretary Cimatu have begun. So that 10 years from now, we can take real pride in a Manila Bay that is not only known for its beauty, particularly its sunset as seen from Manila, but also for its clean water good for swimming and other sports, as ordered by the Supreme Court, no less, in 2008.
