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By Nereo C. Lujan, Philippine Center for
Investigative Journalism
First of two parts
BORACAY ISLAND — This island famous for its
powdery white sand beaches and crystalline waters is paradise to
many people, including about 75,000 foreign tourists who come here
every year. But to long-time resident Diosdada Casidsid, Boracay is
becoming a harder place to live in.
Last year, her family’s already meager income
shrunk even more after the youngest among her 10 children was
hospitalized thrice for what she describes as “stomach ache,
vomiting and diarrhea.” A 46-year-old laundrywoman who is married
to a fisher, Casidsid attributes her one-year-old daughter’s
recurring illness to their drinking water, which comes from a deep
well.
The young Casidsid was just one of the 752
patients diagnosed at the local hospital to have acute
gastroenteritis from January to September last year. Because of
water contamination and poor sewage facilities, the ailment has been
prevalent here in the past five years and has become the leading
illness in Boracay.
When news broke out more than five years ago
that the waters off this tourist magnet of an island were
contaminated with coliform bacteria, national and local officials
crambled to assure both visitors and residents that the problem
would be solved. They also promised that everything would be done to
ensure the health and general well-being of the people as well as
the protection of the Boracay’s fragile ecosystem.
Multimillion-peso projects aimed to accomplish
these have been inaugurated here in the last few years. But Boracay
— one of the main come-ons in this “Visit the Philippines
Year” — remains in danger of becoming a health and environmental
wasteland, largely because of greed and dismal governance.
Both resort owners and local officials continue
to ignore, among other things, the guidelines in a decade-old master
plan for environment-friendly development on Boracay. Resort owners,
claiming they are being charged “exorbitant” rates, have also
dug in their heels against a new water and sewerage system aimed at
averting a water shortage and cleaning up waste disposal.
Environmentalists and development experts say
all these could lead to ecological and financial ruin for Boracay,
where tourism revenues totaled some P2.2 billion in 2001, 23 percent
more than the previous year.
Experts like Francis Gentoral, program manager
of the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) in the Philippines, point to
clear evidence of the island’s ruin: the algal bloom that now
appears near the shore from December to May, the peak season here,
and the rising number of cases of water-borne diseases.
“If no alternatives to septic tanks and to
groundwater source are introduced to Boracay,” he says, “the
situation will not improve.”
An extension of a coral reef, Boracay is a
1,038-hectare island at the northwestern tip of Panay. It has only a
thin layer of topsoil covering coralline limestone, a porous
material that can hold little water and weight and sustain only a
few hardy crops. Domestic wastes and effluents easily penetrate the
porous soil, contaminating both the groundwater and the coastal
waters, wrote British marine scientist Pierre Pillout in a 1996
study.
“The septic system predominating in the
developed tourist area of Boracay is prone to leaching wastes …
due to a combination of local oil conditions, unregulated building
which has ignored setback limits, and poor construction and
maintenance of the septic system itself,” said Pillout. “The
situation is exacerbated further by the high population density
levels along the White Beach and the very high water table, which
has inevitably led to pollution of groundwater supplies.”
In 1997, the Department of Environment and
Natural Resources released a report saying Boracay’s swimming area
and groundwater were contaminated with coliform bacteria (Escherichia
coli).
Coliform belongs to the bacteria family known as
enterobacteriaceae. One of its subgroups is present in huge numbers
in the feces and intestines of humans and other warm-blooded animals
and can enter water bodies from human and animal waste.
Swimming in waters with high levels of coliform
increases the chance of developing illness from pathogens entering
the body through the mouth, nose, ears or cuts in the skin. Coliform
commonly causes gastroenteritis, which is characterized by watery
diarrhea, abdominal cramps, low-grade fever, nausea and malaise.
When the DENR report came out, resorts and tour
operators immediately received calls for cancellation of bookings
from around the world. That year, annual tourist arrivals in Boracay
dropped by 7.6 percent, from 163,727 in 1996 to 151,264. It went
down some more in 1998, decreasing by over 10 percent or to 135,944.
Alarmed government officials, including then
President Fidel Ramos, quickly sought to reassure tourists that
nothing was wrong with the waters of Boracay. Ramos also formed an
inter-agency task force composed of the departments of environment
and natural resources, health, tourism, and science and technology,
which was supposed to check the quality of Boracay’s waters.
That task force, however, never functioned.
Samson Guillergan, director of the environmental management bureau
in Western Visayas, also admits: “After our 1996 tests, which was
the basis of the 1997 coliform report, we did only one test and that
was the one made in July 1997. There was no more test after that
because we have no funds for any follow-up test.”
The second test was the basis of the August 1997
declaration by the Department of Tourism that Boracay’s waters
were safe for swimming. The announcement was made during a three-day
media junket called “Rediscover Boracay,” which was sponsored by
resort owners to help the island recover from the damage wrought by
the coliform report.
By 1999, Boracay’s tourism industry had
bounced back and continues to do well to this day. Yet another –
sadder – reality is that Boracay has remained in the same
ecological quagmire it was in five years ago.
According to an October 2000 study by the Water
Resources Center of the University of San Carlos (USC), the
island’s aquifer still has human fecal pollution, with coliform or
E. coli counts of mostly above 10 per 100 millimeter. “This points
to the idea that septic tanks in the high density area are not doing
good for ground water,” said the authors of the study, which was
commissioned by Aklan Gov. Florencio Miraflores.
The study also blamed septic tanks for the
contamination, saying that even if resorts install three-chamber
septic tanks, “such engineering design would mainly affect the
solid removal, rather than on bacteriological and dissolved
solids.” It noted that most septic tanks in Boracay do not have
properly constructed seepage tile to purify the effluents.
Although the USC study did not include the water
quality of the swimming area, Pillout’s dissertation showed a
strong link between groundwater and coastal waters. Pillout found an
abundance of ammonia, nitrate and phosphate in the coastal waters of
the island, causing the algal bloom that comes this time of the
year.
Since Boracay has no manufacturing industry or
agriculture that could help explain the presence of ammonia, nitrate
and phosphate in the coastal waters, Pillout said the algal bloom
could be caused only by the flow of sewage from septic tanks and
other on-site sanitation systems.
Poor families are bearing the brunt of
groundwater contamination. Dr. Edwin Ilarina, chief at the Don
Ciriaco Señeres Tirol Memorial Hospital (DCSTMH) where Casidsid’s
daughter was confined, says more than half of the acute
gastroenteritis cases handled by his hospital can be attributed to
untreated drinking water. Islanders had been told to use chlorine or
boil their drinking water, he says, but ordinary residents cannot
afford chlorination and they think boiling water is too
time-consuming.
“Water is a major health issue here and unless
everyone has access to clean, potable water, the cases of
water-related diseases can never be minimized,” says Ilarina.
Other water-borne and water-related diseases like parasitism and
amoebiasis have been recorded at the DCSTMH as well. In 2000, it has
230 cases of parasitism; 1,000 cases in 2001 and 214 cases from
January to September 2002.
Boracay’s groundwater is contaminated not only
with coliform but also with seawater because of the overdrawing of
water, according to the USC study.
The main culprit is the tourism industry. During
the off-season, commercial users consume some 1,400 cubic meters of
groundwater a day. During the peak season of December to May, this
could reach 2,300 cubic meters daily. The study estimated that the
island’s groundwater could take a daily maximum extraction of only
1,500 cubic meters.
The USC recommended the full implementation of a
piped water system and a sewerage system with a wastewater treatment
plant. It said, “Access to piped drinking water supply and
sewerage system are globally known to prevent water-borne and
water-related diseases. (These) facilities must be maintained and
operated sustainably for reason of maintenance of public health.”
Boracay has two water utilities: the Boracay
Tubi System (BTS), which began operating in 1999, and the Boracay
Water and Sewerage System (BWSS), which started supplying water in
January 2002.
The BTS was established to provide water to a
giant and posh resort, but a few other resorts and residents later
opted to become concessionaires. The Philippine Tourism
Authority-operated BWSS, meanwhile, now has 82 commercial and 526
residential concessionaires. There are 217 resorts and other
business establishments in Boracay and about 2,306 households.
Both BTS and BWSS source their water elsewhere,
getting it to Boracay through underground pipes. Unlike the BTS,
though, the BWSS was set up specifically to address the problem of
coastal and groundwater contamination.
The BWSS is part of the P600-million Boracay
Environmental Infrastructure Project (BEIP) inaugurated by President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in October 2001. Aside from supplying water,
the BWSS has a sewerage system set to be operational this month.
Once concessionaires are connected to its central sewerage system,
all septic tanks in Boracay will be decommissioned.
On Sept. 12, the National Water Resource Board (NWRB)
also ordered the closure of all deep and shallow wells, citing the
findings of the USC study. But the implementation of the order has
been shelved, pending a public hearing on water rates. As of this
writing, there were still at least 117 wells operating in Boracay,
with resorts among their owners.
Boracaynons have been grumbling about the BWSS
rates, but it has been the business establishment owners who have
complained the loudest, a reaction bound to be repeated once the
BWSS starts charging for its sewerage system.
Dionisio Salme, president of the Boracay
Foundation, Ins. (BFI), an organization of resort and business
establishment owners, notes that in nearby Kalibo, the cost of water
is only an average of P12.50 per cubic meter.
In comparison, the BWSS charges commercial
establishments P500 for the first 10 cubic meters, with rates
increasing as water consumption rises. Residential consumers also
pay P500 for the first 10 cubic meters, but are charged less than
half the commercial rates for consumption above this amount.
The proposed monthly rate for the sewerage
system, which is to operate in January this year, is P500 for
residential concessionaires and P1,000 for commercial
concessionaires.
Agnes Bocar, PTA’s project officer for Boracay,
says, “People should realize how expensive it is to transfer water
from Malay to Boracay and in treating the sewage that tourists leave
behind.”
But she also says that BWSS’ rates were
formulated after it conducted a market study. Bocar points out as
well that the PTA is currently subsidizing the cost of water in
Boracay and that the BWSS has a socialized rate scheme.
The BFI and the PTA are now talking about
possible lower rates. Yet there are many ordinary residents like
souvenir vendor Gloria Magbanua, a 44-year-old mother of six, who
says, “I’d rather pay for clean water than spend a big amount of
money when my children get hospitalized.”
Environmental activist and artist Perry Argel,
head of the Center for Art Creativity and Consciousness here, for
his part comments, “The cost of water is not an issue. The big
issue here is the deterioration of Boracay’s environment.”
He says that if resort owners want to keep
attracting tourists, then they should pay the price of keeping the
ecological balance of the island. Argues Argel: “Boracay
deteriorated because all that resort owners want is profit. Once the
beauty of this island fades, I’m sure they will realize that they
had killed the hen that lays eggs. And when that time comes, it will
be too late for them to resuscitate it.”
To be continued
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