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WITH the
sewerage system—whatever there is of it—of Manila being
centuries old and only serving a small part of the
metropolis, waters of Manila Bay, Laguna Lake and the
Pasig River have become the draining ground for liquid
waste, causing their degradation to critical levels.
With
this in mind, the Department of Environment and Natural
Resources on Thursday asked the metropolitan water
concessionaires— Manila Water and Maynilad—to build a
new sewerage system throughout their concession areas.
Environment Secretary Lito Atienza pointed out that only
5.6 percent of Metro Manila’s population is connected to
a sewerage system. “Maynilad and Manila Water are making
all Metro Manila residents contributors to water
pollution with their failure to fulfill their
obligation.”
This,
after both have been collecting for a number of years a
monthly sewerage fee from their clients. “This sewerage
fee is meant to pay for the provision of sewerage
services. The amount they have collected, which is
certainly mind-boggling by now, must be spent for its
intended purpose. Where is this money? How much has
already been collected?”
In
addition, Atienza argued it is the moral and legal
obligation of the water concessionaires to do so in the
light of findings that water supply for Metro Manila
would become very tight in the near future, especially
with such degraded water sources. Food fish production
in the lake, which supplies about 30 percent of the
metropolis’s fish needs, is also becoming untenable.
Atienza
said that “efforts to clean up these important bodies of
water in the metropolis would be half-done, if not an
exercise in futility, with wastewater in several
hundreds of thousands of households being directly
discharged into them.”
Manila
Water provides water services and is responsible for the
sewerage services of residents in the east zone of Metro
Manila. This area comprises the cities of Makati, Pasig,
Mandaluyong, Marikina, most parts of Quezon City, some
parts of Manila, San Juan, Taguig and Pateros.
The
concession area of Maynilad covers the west zone, which
is most parts of Manila, eight other cities and two
towns in Metro Manila and one city and five towns in
Cavite.
Atienza
said almost all domestic wastewater are inadequately
treated sewage. They comprise about 63 percent of all
sewage, the other 27 percent being industrial liquid
waste. |
