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By Henrylito D. Tacio, Special Correspondent
Conclusion
LAGUNA Lake is the largest freshwater body in
the Philippines. Historians credit its name to Juan de Salcedo
of Spain, who reached the bay in 1572. In English, Laguna de Bay
means Lake of Bay, the latter word the name of what was then
Laguna’s major settlement.
Dr. Jose Rizal spent his childhood years on the
shores of Laguna de Bay and wrote of its beauty in his novel, Noli
Me Tangere. The national hero also used the lake as the
setting of many pivotal scenes in the sequel, El Filibusterismo.
During centuries of Spanish colonial rule, the
lake nurtured a lush marine kingdom — bangus, seabass, and even
sharks that entered from Manila Bay via the Pasig River.
Within the last century, however, the build-up
of industries along the Pasig River has polluted the river and
drastically depleted the lake’s marine life.
Today, the lake is the center of Southern
Luzon’s booming industrial and real estate development, and is
reeling from the heavy burden of sustaining the needs of a huge
population.
“Manufacturing firms established in Calabarzon
(referring to the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and
Quezon) depend very much on the lake for their power generation and
industrial cooling needs,” said Dr. William Padolina when he was
still secretary of Science and Technology during the administration
of former President Fidel Ramos.
“Farmers and agricultural producers also
depend on the lake for irrigating about 30,000 hectares of croplands
and farmlands,” Padolina stressed.
A paper written by Merlyn Rivera of the Ecosystems Research and
Development Bureau describes farmer-irrigators as “consumptive
users.” This sector extracts a total of 32.68 million cubic meters
per year from the lake. Domestic water users extract on a yearly
basis 52.50 million cubic meters.
Business firms also get water from the lake.
The Ayala Land, Inc. draws from the lake drinking water for
concessionaires and clients of their real estate business. The
company reportedly extracted a volume of 204,445.30 cubic meters in
1999 and a total of 1.303 million cubic meters from 1994 to 1999.
In addition, companies engaged in the gravel and
sand business and crushing of aggregates use an average of 630,000
cubic meters per year in their business operations.
Due to worsening environmental problems, many
sectors have sounded the alarm for the “dying lake.” This
led to the creation of the Laguna Lake Development Authority. The
agency’s mandate is, “to carry out the development of the Laguna
Lake Region with due regard and adequate provision for environmental
management and control, preservation of the quality of human life
and ecological systems, and the prevention of undue ecological
disturbances, deterioration and pollution.”
A couple of years back, the lake authority
started imposing on some industries the environmental user’s fee (EUF).
“The EUF serves as an economic instrument and
challenges businesses to provide waste water treatment facilities or
devise more efficient and environment-friendly production
processes,” a lake authority official explains.
With the mounting environmental decay of the
lake and outcry of fish farmers who have suffered heavy economic
losses due to pollution-related fish kills in recent years, then
President Fidel Ramos issued Executive Order No. 1211 in 1993,
creating the Mt. Makiling Reserve Area and Laguna de Bay Commission,
“to coordinate and oversee efforts to preserve and develop Laguna
de Bay.”
For its part, the Department of Science and
Technology implemented the “Basin Approach for the Rehabilitation
and Management of Laguna de Bay,” to enhance the lake’s water
quality.
The enthusiastic response from state agencies
and non-government organizations, and foreign environmental groups,
has given Laguna de Bay a new lease on life.
During the 6th International Conference in Lake
Baikal and Ulan Ude in Eastern Siberia last year, Laguna de Bay was
admitted to the Living Lakes network, which works to preserve and
rehabilitate endangered lakes and other inland bodies of water
around the world.
This coming August, Laguna Lake will take center
stage at the 7th Living Lakes conference in Johannesburg and
Pretoria, South Africa.
But major problems remain and there may be
little hope for the return of the once thriving marine kingdom.
Mai Flor, former executive director of the
Presidential Task Force on Water Resources Development and
Management, notes that the lake’s function has shifted from
fisheries to domestic and industrial water supply.
“We have a critical water situation. Our
only source of surface water now is Angat Dam (in Bulacan), and that
is being shared with agriculture and (electric) power,” she points
out.
Flor bewails that, “so many people now are
extracting groundwater through deep wells that saltwater intrusion
is happening.”
“Soon that source will be gone,” she warns.
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