Trash dumped in Pasig River

Residents living along the stretch of the Pasig River in San Juan have started throwing their garbage in the river since the closure of the San Mateo landfill last Dec. 31 and the local officials admitted being helpless in stopping the illegal practice.

Councilor Rolando Bernardo, chairman of the Committee on Solid Waste Management, warned that the continued illegal disposal of garbage would cause environmental "nightmares" in the town, especially in barangays Ermitanyo, Balong Bato, Progreso, Salapan and Batis, which are situated along the Pasig River.

"It appears most of the residents have began throwing their garbage into the river. But I do not think that the culprits are purely San Juan residents. The source of the trash may have come from nearby cities such as Manila and Quezon," said Bernardo. "Our hands are tied. We cannot do anything. We have been encountering garbage disposal problems since Dec. 30 last year."

Bernardo, who also chairs the town’s Sagip Pasig Ilog project, said the volume of collected garbage being thrown in the Pasig River had multiplied 10 times since the landfill closure. "Before the organization only accumulates 10 sacks of trash, but since the San Mateo landfill had been closed, the number of collected garbage had reached between 100 to 200 sacks a day," he said.

Bernardo appealed to the concerned residents to stop the practice of illegally dumping garbage into the Pasig River to prevent the problem from getting out of hand.

Just the same, he instructed his men to continue bagging the garbage and store them near the riverbank. However, he expressed fear that more problems may occur with the coming of rainy days. The stored garbage, he said, would be washed back into the river, which could lead to high tide and the eventual flooding of low-lying areas of the municipality.

The garbage crisis in Metro Manila began after an Antique Regional Trial Court issued a temporary restraining order, preventing the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) from using the Semirara Island in Antique as a landfill.

Mayor Jinggoy Estrada told The STAR Monday that the municipality had its own way of disposing its garbage. But he refused to elaborate, "other towns and cities of Metro Manila might copy them."

Meanwhile, the leading private sector group involved in the Pasig River rehabilitation project expressed fears that the current garbage problem will set back ongoing river rehabilitation efforts.

Clean and Green Foundation Piso para sa Pasig said that there is an increase in solid wastes now being thrown into the Pasig River. "This is a very unfortunate development and it endangers the river rehabilitation efforts of the past 10 years," Piso para sa Pasig project Director Ramon Jacinto Socco Jr. said.

Socco also said that households located along the Pasig, Marikina and San Juan riverbanks might resort back to throwing their garbage into the rivers because of worsening collection backlogs.

"We urge all concerned government agencies and local government units to resolve Metro Manila’s garbage crisis the soonest possible time as it already creates havoc in our river rehabilitation efforts as well as the people’s lives", he added.

PPP also appealed to all Metro Manila residents not to worsen the problem by throwing garbage on street corners and in rivers and creeks.

The group also plans to ask Congress for a higher budgetary allocation for the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission to push forward the efforts to bring back life to the Pasig River and restore it to its former glory and importance.

In a study conducted with the help of the Royal Danish Government in 1989, solid wastes account for 10 percent of the Pasig River’s pollutants.

Thirty-three metric tons of solid wastes were dumped into the Pasig River daily in 1993 but the Ramos administration’s Pasig River Rehabilitation Program succeeded in lowering it to 20 per day.