THE Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) called a meeting last Monday of mayors of Metro Manila and other towns and cities in the provinces around Manila Bay as part of the total effort to clean it up after many long years of inaction that led to its present state of degradation.
DILG Secretary Eduardo Año said 178 mayors were asked to attend the meeting. There was yet no specific plan of action for the mayors. The meeting was just an initial effort by the DILG to support the rehabilitation program led by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) headed by Secretary Roy Cimatu. But four of the Metro mayors did not attend, along with many of the 178 mayors of towns around the bay – in Bataan, Pampanga, Bulacan, and Cavite.
Their absence from this initial meeting reflects the neglect suffered so long by Manila Bay. If this thinking persists among so many of these mayors, especially those from Metro Manila, the total effort to clean up the bay is facing real difficulties ahead.
The support of the mayors is crucial to the drive to stop the pollution of Manila Bay. The DENR and other national government agencies have started the campaign with the closure of the Manila Zoo and several restaurants and hotels for pouring their untreated wastes through three outfalls directly into the bay, the operation of treatment plans by Metro Manila’s two water utilities, and the drawing up of plans to move hundreds of squatter families from their present sites along the rivers.
But the problem of Manila bay is so big that the direct involvement of all the cities and towns around the bay is needed. This is why the DILG called that meeting last Monday. After that initial meeting, there will be others which will take up specific action plans.
Secretary Cimatu says it will take at least seven years to carry out the project. There will be need to review many projects in various stages of planning that may have to be revised, such as 10 proposed reclamation projects in the bay.
The Supreme Court, in a 2008 decision calling for the rehabilitation of Manila Bay, named 13 government agencies with definite roles to play in the total rehabilitation plan, among them the DENR, the DILG, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS), the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA), the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA), the Department of Health (DOH), the Philippine National Police, (PNP) and the Philippine Coast Guard.
But possibly biggest role will have to be played by the local governments led by the mayors of cities and towns which are the principal sources of the pollution that has so degraded Manila Bay.
