Manila Bay cleanup

My mother’s generation talks about the days when rafts could be hired in Pasay to go out to Manila Bay on dates or for family picnics.

Farther south in Parañaque were beach resorts with private rooms where even movie stars dated.

The resorts dotted coastal communities all the way to the southern tip of Cavite. But water pollution must have been a problem dating back to the time of the Philippine revolutionaries under Cavite’s favorite son Emilio Aguinaldo – or perhaps even longer, since it was a populated area with no sewerage system or water treatment facilities.

In my childhood during one of my family’s beach picnics, we went to one of the resorts in Cavite, where I stepped on a discarded tin can embedded in the seabed, not visible in the turbid water and black sand. I can still remember howling in pain as the doctor in a nearby clinic cleaned and treated the deep cut in the sole of my right foot; the scar remains.

During the Marcos regime, a crony family picked a prime spot and developed it into the exclusive 3,300-hectare Puerto Azul country club in Ternate, which quickly became popular for golf and water sports.

This was only possible because the quality of the water was still relatively good in the 1980s.

After the Marcoses fled, Puerto Azul was sequestered and fell into disrepair, while the water quality in Manila Bay progressively deteriorated.

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Swimming has been banned in Manila Bay for many years now, for public health reasons. But we have many images of bay guards watching helplessly as thousands of people swarm the rocky shores of Roxas Boulevard and swim in the murky water, ignoring warnings that they could get the cooties or worse.

Today garbage still washes up regularly on the shores of Cavite.  There’s a restaurant in Cavite City that I visit regularly because it’s beside a spot where fishermen unload their day’s catch of shrimp and squid. The place serves good Hawaiian and sisig pizza and Cavite coffee and faces the sea. But the lovely sea view is marred by the garbage that always litters the narrow beach. If not for the sea breeze that lifts and carries away odors, the place would stink. If ever President Duterte visits the place, he might mention “cesspool” again.

Local government officials, starting with barangay personnel, should be spearheading the regular cleanup of coastal areas, in coordination with private sector stakeholders. Local officials in Cavite have clearly failed.

Puerto Azul is still being used for golf, but it needs a major facelift. It’s a shame because that spot wasn’t picked arbitrarily for resort development; it has a great sea view and the natural attraction is still there. It’s a relatively short drive from Metro Manila, and once the road leaves the populated areas, the drive is pleasant and the Ternate landscape delightful.

With the government now bent on cleaning up Manila Bay, perhaps the beach resorts in Cavite could be compelled to do their part in cleaning up. The owners’ cooperation could be stronger if they realize that clean waters would mean more visitors and a business boom.

Because of the polluted waters of Cavite, people are prepared to take longer drives to the beaches of neighboring Batangas, where local officials and private resort operators are aware of the appeal of ecotourism.

A few years after my foot injury, a relative bought a resthouse in Nasugbu’s Tali Beach, with its white sand and the water so sparklingly clear I could see small jellyfish approaching and avoid stepping on the sea urchins. The water quality was so good my father and I could pick oysters from a cave wall, dip them in the seawater and eat them raw without being hit by food poisoning. I never went swimming in Cavite again.

So I’d like to see if the government can make good on its promise to make Manila Bay fit for swimming again.

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Environment officials are making the right noises so far on how they plan to go about the cleanup.

President Duterte used his usual golpe de gulat to deliver his message, threatening to shut down bayfront hotels that fail to install their own water treatment facilities.

The hotel association has already expressed its members’ readiness to comply. There are bigger bay polluters, however, as indicated during typhoons, when tons of garbage wash up along Roxas Boulevard including the service road.

That solid waste does not come from the hotels, but from the informal settlements and fishing communities around the bay. Author Dan Brown’s “Gates of Hell” is a charcoal-making slum settlement dubbed Ulingan, facing the bay in Manila’s port district.

The garbage also washes out into the sea from the numerous esteros or creeks and other waterways in Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

You can tell the quality of governance in Metro Manila’s cities by the quality of the waterways. In several esteros, the water is no longer visible because of a dense carpet of garbage.

Environment officials have said the Manila Bay cleanup will include waterways around it. Commercial and industrial establishments around the bay will also be inspected for garbage management practices and the release of sludge.

Now what about the waste from the country’s busiest seaport? All types of vessels enter Manila Bay. No matter how energy-efficient, the ships discharge certain amounts of toxic waste into the water. Manila’s Port Area is also heavily polluted.

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Still, we should believe that anything is possible if we put our heart into it. A similar campaign was launched to clean up the Pasig River, which used to look like an open sewer where aborted fetuses and corpses of murder victims were often fished out. The joke at the time was that if you jumped into the Pasig, you would die not from drowning but from suffocating in the filth.

The cleanup gained traction during the presidency of Fidel Ramos, who liked to narrate that he used to swim in the Pasig. His wife Ming spearheaded the effort; Gina Lopez, later named environment secretary by President Duterte, continues to be an advocate of the river rehab.

I’ve been encouraging people to take the river ferry service to see the success of the effort. It still has some ways to go, but the improvement is visible. In some spots such as Guadalupe in Makati, the water quality has improved enough for people to take to fishing not just for their day’s meal but also for sport.

Who thought this was possible? We could be in for a similar pleasant surprise in Manila Bay.