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By Patricia L. Adversario, Senior Reporter
Conclusion
Dumping of garbage in Lupang Arenda is building
a “time bomb for public health and the Laguna de Bay ecosystem.”
This is how a foreign consultant for the Laguna Lake Development
Authority described the situation in a memo he wrote last June to
the LLDA board.
The consultant said the handling of garbage in
Arena violates acceptable standards set by the Solid Waste Management
Act of 2000. He recommended several tests to determine the extent of
contamination and health hazards caused by dumped garbage.
Lupang Arenda is part of the 171-hectare
floodplain located at Sitio Tapayan, Bgy. Sta. Ana, Taytay, Rizal.
It forms part of the shore bed of Laguna de Bay, one of the
world’s living lakes and the largest in the country.
In 1995, former President Fidel V. Ramos issued
Presidential Proclamation 704 that reserved 80 hectares of the
floodplain for social housing development for Pasig River informal
settlers and the less privileged families of Taytay.
There were only 300 families there in 1996. The
population has grown to at least 25,000 families — and it is still
growing.
To date, the LLDA has yet to test the level of
contamination of the water around Arenda. The agency maintains water
sampling stations at five areas in the lake, but none of them is
near the flood plain.
There’s no available data on how much raw
garbage has been dumped onto the lake’s shore bed. But, Col.
Feliciano C. Dimayuga, who heads the police contingent of Task
Force Lupang Arenda, told The Times, before the enactment of the
Solid Waste law last year, an average of 100 dump trucks a day
arrived to unload raw garbage from Manila, Pasay, San Juan,
Mandaluyong, Valenzuela, Pasay and South Harbor.
Taytay alone produces 60 tons of garbage a day.
Its mayor, June V. Zapanta, admits that his town government has been
dumping waste into Lupang Arenda since the closure of the San Mateo
landfill in 2000.
Albert A. Magalang, executive director of the
National Solid Waste Management Commission, estimates that 15 to 20
percent of the raw waste dumped into Arenda is “hospital waste
that could contain infectious or hazardous substances.” Household
waste roughly makes up 75 percent of all waste dumped into the lake.
There are no sewerage facilities for the 25,000
families living on the flood plain. The same can be said of the
entire Rizal province whose 13 municipalities with Muntinlupa City
surround the lake.
Zapanta himself points out: “Every town
in Rizal dumps into the lake or along the shoreline. Even garbage
from Morong, which is dumped in the mountains, eventually ends up in
the lake. Garbage from other towns dumped into creeks also
eventually go to the lake.”
But then, contamination from these indirect
sources shrinks over space and time, said Jun Mistica, head of the
LLDA special concerns division that supervises shore land areas.
“It’s not as bad as when dumped garbage directly contaminates
the lake.”
Going by nothing more than casual statements and
anecdotal data about the amount of dumping at Lupang Arenda,
environment officials can’t say with certainty whether the garbage
contamination has had a significant impact on the lake’s
ecosystem.
“Any adverse effect will take time for us to
ascertain. So far, the water quality of the lake has not changed.
The lake is still a viable source of water,” said Alicia E. Bongco,
head of LLDA’s project management division. Based on the
environment department’s standards, the Laguna lake water is still
marked “Class C for fisheries use.”
“If further pollution of the lake is
controlled, we can still use the lake as source of water,” added
Magalang. “The lake can still regenerate itself as long as no
further dumping is done. But if the water becomes more polluted, the
treatment cost to make it usable would become prohibitive,” he
said.
DENR Undersecretary Sanchez points out that
pollutants reach the lake not only from Lupang Arenda. Pollution
also comes from each of the 21 river systems that flow into the
lake.
“Whether the contribution is big or
small, if allowed to continue unabated, it will destroy the lake.
Big or small, any flow of pollutants should be stopped. Unless you
stop waste from coming in, the lake will remain polluted,” he
said.
The MWSS is committed to supply 300 million
liters of water daily to Metro Manilas by 2006. The construction of
the Liaban Dam has been deferred. And it will take 10 to 15
years to complete the Agos River Multipurpose Water Reserve
Development Project. That shifts the focus on Laguna de Bay once
more as a major source of water.
But over time, the lake’s water quality will
eventually change. “Leachate contamination is a gradual process.
It might take years or decades, but it is a virtual time bomb,”
said Albert Nauta, project team leader of Sustainable Development of
the Laguna de Bay Environment under the LLDA.
Leachate is the liquid that seeps through soil
or in this case, the oozings from the garbage that serves as the
“land surface” of Lupang Arenda. Regular monitoring, therefore,
is crucial.
Nauta adds that it is important to conduct
“groundwater vulnerability mapping” to determine which way the
leachate moves. How fast is it being carried by the current? What is
the time scale within which it is likely to contaminate groundwater
sources around the lake? “We also need to test for
contamination of the water from deep wells installed in Arenda,”
he said.
Bongco said garbage has “reclaimed” at least
an additional 20 hectares from the original 80 hectares designated
as a resettlement site. Unless dumping is stopped, garbage will
create more “land” that will entice more informal settlers to
live there.
Task force officials admit there are no studies
showing how much more pressure the loose mixture of raw garbage and
soil dumped on the shore bed can take.
“The settlements there stand on unstable
ground because the land refill is largely made of raw garbage,”
said an engineer from LLDA who requested anonymity. He witnessed how
truckloads of raw garbage were just poured into the flood plain and
topped with some soil to kill the odor.
“Under that layer of garbage and soil is the
lake. If that layer shifts, the lives of those people who live there
will be in great danger,” Bongco says.
But officials of the NHA, which is tasked to
develop the resettlement site, say: “We should not be held
accountable because we did not bring the trash in. It’s the local
governments that did.”
“Informal settlers staked their claim there
without the consent or invitation of the NHA. We did not bring
people to live there because it’s not even habitable,” said Tess
Dungca, program manager of NHA South Luzon Bicol division.
But as Bongco ruefully admits, if no measures
are taken to ward off possible catastrophes, a lot of lives and
property will be lost — and “people will hold the government
responsible.”
Meanwhile, nature and the lake, are biding their
time. They will speak out in due course to teach a lesson on how
they ought to be treated with more respect.
First Part
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