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CITING
the urgent need to safeguard the country’s precious
freshwater resources from contamination, Greenpeace on
Monday launched Project: Clean Water, an initiative that
aims to catalyze action to protect Philippine freshwater
sources. The launch coincided with the release of the
report “The state of water in the Philippines,” a
comprehensive survey of available information regarding
water resources in the Philippines, focusing on the
issues of pollution, especially of drinking water and
freshwater sources, and water scarcity.
It also
reviews the country’s existing legal and policy
frameworks for water use, quality control and
management.
Based on
the research, Greenpeace said:
• the
quality of freshwater sources is steadily declining
while the costs of obtaining clean water is rising;
•
although many laws have been enacted to protect water,
such as the Clean Water Act, these are among the most
blatantly abused environmental laws because of poor
enforcement;
•
although government agencies monitor water quality, the
parameters are severely limited and do not include many
toxic substances from new technologies, including some
of the most harmful compounds known to humans such as
persistent organic pollutants, or POPs; and
•
declining water quality is compounded by the problem of
water scarcity which is now a very palpable threat,
making access to clean water more and more difficult.
“Water
is a renewable resource, but it is not an inexhaustible
resource. What our research presents is just a
bird’s-eye view of bigger problems to come if we don’t
take serious steps to protect our freshwater sources,”
said project leader Greenpeace Southeast Asia toxics
campaigner Beau Baconguis.
The
Philippines has an abundance of freshwater resources but
ranks second-lowest among Southeast Asian countries with
freshwater availability. Experts have also predicted
that by 2025, water availability deficit would take
place in several river basins such as in Pampanga and
Agno, in Pasig-Laguna, in Cagayan Valley, all other
regions in Luzon, in Jalaur and Ilog Hilabangan, and in
the
island of
Cebu
in Visayas.
Water
pollution, climate change and inadequate management of
water resources are expected to aggravate the problem of
clean water availability and access.
Confronting water pollution, Greenpeace says, is of
primary importance. Despite government laws and
initiatives, there has been no substantial improvement
but rather a continuous decline in the quality of clean
water sources.
Early
this year the Department of Environment and Natural
Resources (DENR) acknowledged that as many as 50 of the
421 rivers in the country can be considered
“biologically dead” due to pollution. And although the
government agency, through its Environmental Monitoring
Board (EMB), regularly monitors pollutants in identified
water bodies, they miss out on the most toxic compounds.
A
Greenpeace study released in February monitored
tetracholorethylene in groundwater sources near the
Cavite Export Processing Zone at 70 times above the US
environmental limit. The EMB admitted that they have no
capacity to test for the said carcinogenic chemical and
do not do so.
The same
chemical was also found in groundwater sources in Las
Piñas City a month later, as tested by an electronics
company.
“Another
problem with the existing laws, aside from the fact that
they cannot be enforced, is the fixation on standards.
The law does not put a stop to the presence of toxic
chemicals in the water, but assigns limits, or
‘standards’ about how much of these chemicals can be
tolerated in the water. This leads to a legalized sort
of pollution, because the ‘allowable standards’ for
example of lead or mercury in the water, build up in the
environment and can still end up in our food, or in our
water,” said Baconguis. “Clearly, what is needed is a
system that goes beyond standards, and focuses on
prevention—cleaning up production processes on the front
end—rather than contain, disguise, or dilute whatever
toxic effluents end up in our water.”
“Clean
water is a right for all. It is time that serious
solutions are enforced,” said Baconguis. |
