MANILA, Philippines?With the extremely heavy rains and extensive flooding in Metro Manila and environs that it spawned, Tropical Storm "Ondoy" (international codename: Ketsana) appears to have succeeded where many governments have failed: telling people what waterways are meant for.

It might have swept away entire villages, but Ondoy's great flood is reviving hope that this generation which saw nature's wrath last month will also be able to see its beauty once the Pasig River is rehabilitated.

"Because of Ondoy, people who live (along the river) now know that it is dangerous to live there," Kapit Bisig Para sa Ilog Pasig president Gina Lopez said.

Lopez spoke during Friday?s launch of the Kapit Bisig partnership with the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) to involve college students and teachers in the ongoing seven-year makeover of the Pasig River.

Started in February, the project aims to rehabilitate the Pasig River by first relocating thousands of illegal settlers clogging the 27-kilometer river and its 48 tributaries.

Three months before Ondoy struck, Kapit Bising managed to relocate some 300 families living along a creek in the City of Manila.

Project director Carminia Aragon said: "In a sense, we managed to save them from Ondoy. The families were telling me they couldn't imagine what would have happened to them if they stayed in their shanties."

Ondoy also washed away lingering doubts among the remaining families who have been hesitant to relocate, she added.

Kapit Bisig plans to relocate 10,000 more families living along the tributaries of the Pasig. It also hopes to relocate some 100,000 families living along the Manggahan Floodway in Pasig City.

Supported by donations from private businesses and by the National Housing Authority, Kapit Bisig, which is under the ABS-CBN Foundation, maintains a relocation site in Calauan, Laguna, called "Bayan ni Juan." Families are provided not only with houses but also with livelihood training.

Ondoy's destruction has made the project more relevant: It is no longer just about saving the environment. It is also about saving lives and providing poor families decent homes.

Ondoy killed about 500 people, damaged P11.21 billion worth of crops and infrastructure, and wrecked nearly 154,000 houses, the National Disaster Coordinating Council said.

In a presentation before college and university officials in Metro Manila and nearby regions, Lopez lamented the sorry state of the Pasig River and its tributaries which have been functioning as Metro Manila's septic tank.

In Manila, for instance, the water that flows into the Estero de Paco comes from a tenement, Lopez said. Shanties along the creek do not have toilets.

It was not surprising that the creek's water contains 1.6 million MPN (most probable number) of coliform, an indicator of human waste contamination, when the acceptable level of coliform for fish to survive is only 5,000 MPN, Lopez said. The San Juan River is just as bad: It has 1.5 billion MPN of coliform.

Kapit Bisig targets to finish cleaning the Estero de Paco this year. The San Juan River and the Marikina River, which both feed water to the Pasig River, are next.

These projects ultimately lead to returning the lost glory of the Pasig Rive?where water will be so clean people can safely swim in it?by 2015.

But aside from relocating illegal settlers, Kapit Bisig aims to sustain gains in saving the Pasig River by changing people's mindsets and making them care more about the environment, Aragon said.

She said: "Our vision is that all of us will realize the importance of our rivers and the importance of keeping them clean. We want a shift in the way we treat our environment."

In an interview after the program, CHEd Chairman Emmanuel Angeles promised to integrate Pasig River cleanup activities into the National Service Training Program administered by colleges and universities.

Kapit Bisig said colleges and universities could join its youth program by implementing solid waste management in their campuses as well as encouraging their students to join the "Philippine International Marathon: A Run for the Pasig River" scheduled on November 8.

Involving the youth is a tested formula, Lopez said, pointing at the success of the signature campaign for the "Save the La Mesa Watershed Project" where three million out of the five million signatures gathered were from the youth sector.

This time, she is hoping for bigger participation, considering that the challenge of reviving the Pasig River is a difficult but doable task.