(First of three parts)

MEYCAUAYAN CITY -- Sorting through dirty and at times worm-filled tin cans on the mounds of garbage on a two-hectare dump in Barangay Caingin here, Glenford Estrella, 41, pauses once in a while to clear his lungs.

It is the stink from this part of the Meycauayan River, which is just 10 steps away from where he rummages, that makes this scavenger queasy.

“It really stinks. The stench here is worse than garbage fumes,” he says.

So he pines for his river in Cagayan province, the one that flows through his village of Dal-la in Baggao town.

“That river is still clean,” he says, recalling his visit there last year.

While Estrella works around here for less than five hours a day, just about the time needed to fill his three sacks with cans, Estela Cadornigas, 52, lives at the dump.

“It is too much to bear,” she says of the odor that has been her companion since she and her husband Ruben moved here in 2000 to gather scrap. Her house leans on the river dike.

“It stinks all year round. The stench becomes overpowering whenever there is work at the tanneries,” she says.

Milky liquid

Five tanneries operate across from the river and two pipes release milk-colored liquid straight into the water.

“If it’s low tide, you can see that these pipes drain directly to the river,” says a resident.

The leachate from the dump also drains into the river through pipes jutting out of the dike.

A resident says the textile and plastics factories in Valenzuela City, which is about a kilometer from the dump, make the stench worse.

Dirty 30

Fishers-turned-boatmen, who transport passengers to and from the interconnected rivers of Meycauayan, Marilao and Obando (collectively called the Meycauayan River system by the Environmental Management Bureau), have seen the basin decay in the last 50 years.

Marilao River has the dubious distinction of being on a US-based institute’s “Dirty 30” list of the world’s dirtiest rivers.

“There are no more shrimp, crabs, biyang pukpok and bidbid to catch,” says Lito Andres, 67, of the river of his youth.

Truths drowned

Amid the chorus of complaints, blame and furor following the embarrassing tag, two truths have been drowned.

First, that the river and the mess in it do not belong to Meycauayan, Marilao and Obando alone.

Fed from the west by the watersheds of Sierra Madre, the Meycauayan River system runs east from the uplands of Rizal, snaking through Caloocan City, entering Bulacan through the City of San Jose del Monte, then to Marilao, Meycauayan and Obando before it finally empties into the Manila Bay.

The Bocaue River merges with the Marilao River. Wastes that get into the river are carried downstream -- in Marilao, Meycauayan and Obando.

At least a million residents

More than one million people live around the river system.

“Something is unique here. Several industries are in one area … and the low-lying areas have become the receptacle of wastes,” said Marlo Mendoza, country representative of the New York-based Blacksmith Institute.

The institute facilitated last year’s online voting for the most polluted rivers from among the 400 sites that it monitors around the globe.

The river has another use. It is the “source of fish for Metro Manila,” the EMB said.

Second truth

Second, the stink that Estrella and Cadornigas detest but have to live with is but one of the threats to public health.

Before the media picked up the wake-up call of the Blacksmith Institute early last year, the deeper problem was unraveled quietly by the EMB. The bureau conducted surface water quality tests at the Marilao, Meycauayan and Bocaue rivers from 2002 to 2005.

The EMB posted the results on the Internet in April last year.

Aquatic life can’t be sustained

The numbers indicate that the downstream areas can no longer sustain aquatic life.

“Notably, the Bocaue River is one of the country’s water bodies that need immediate intervention. Water quality criteria, DO (dissolved oxygen) and BOD (biochemical oxygen demand), which are indicators for aquatic life environment, are not being attained,” the study said.

“The percentages of compliance to these criteria on both its upstream and downstream waters are among the lowest, ranging from 30 percent to less than 20 percent. In fact, its upstream portion has met the BOD criteria only once out of the 12 samples taken within the three-year monitoring period,” it said.

As for the Marilao River, the study said: “The three-year average monitoring results indicate that [it] has been failing to meet the DO, BOD and TSS (total suspended solids like silt, decaying plants and animals and domestic and industrial wastes) criteria in all monitoring stations.”

The DO readings for the Marilao River were “found to approach zero, indicating the extremely poor water quality of the river.”

The Meycauayan River also failed to meet the DO, BOD and TSS criteria.

Heavy metals

Worse, the three rivers have become receptacles of heavy metals, like lead, mercury, cadmium and chromium. These were detected from samples of surface water.

Their levels often exceeded the safety limits and did not appear to be consistently diminishing over time.

Of the metals, lead was recorded to have high concentrations in the three towns.

The World Health Organization said “too much lead can damage various systems of the body, including the nervous and reproductive systems and the kidneys, and it can cause high blood pressure and anemia.”

Cadmium and mercury, at high levels, can damage the kidney while high levels of chromium can harm the lungs.

In 2006, the findings of the study by the Blacksmith Institute, EMB and local governments showed a dire situation.

While samples of surface water taken from 25 points of the Meycauayan River, 17 points of the Marilao River and 5 points of the Obando River mostly conformed to the limits safe to humans, many of the sludge sampled from the same points showed high concentrations of heavy metals, according to Exuperio Lipayon, chief of the regional EMB’s pollution control division.

“There was a big indication of high concentration of heavy metals,” he said.

Lipayon said the metals appeared to have accumulated at the bottom of the rivers for 40 to 50 years.

Groundwater

Three groundwater sites showed lead, mercury, chromium and arsenic to be within allowable levels. But not the chromium level in samples taken from the groundwater at Sitio Libis in Barangay Saluysoy, Meycauayan.

There were no immediately available data that show that the heavy metals have actually contaminated the groundwater in the Marilao, Meycauayan, Bocaue and Obando areas.

The four towns were not on the list of 227 sites covered by groundwater monitoring by the EMB and the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA).

Assurance of a “safe, piped potable water supply” for Bulacan’s two cities and 22 towns (except for Doña Remedios Trinidad town) was last given by the LWUA in July 2003.

The findings in the 2006 surface water and sludge tests and the 2002-05 surface water tests could not be compared because the sample sites were different, according to Lipayon.

Asked if the drinking water in the area was safe given the high levels of heavy metals on the river system, he said: “There is risk.”

No advice

Confirmation by environment officials of the serious pollution came on the heels of the “Dirty 30” tag on the Marilao River. But they were silent, unsure or evasive about the effects of pollution on public health.

Since September, no public advisories have been issued whether the water, at least in riverbank communities, was safe for drinking, cooking or bathing; whether the fishes caught or cultured in the downstream areas were safe to eat; or whether swimming there was safe.

No recent groundwater tests have been done.

Tremendous problem

The most that Dr. Juvencio Ordoña, director of the Department of Health in Central Luzon, could say was that, “the problem has become too tremendous, like the Pasig River.”

He said the mayors of the four affected Bulacan towns had been informed about the water quality results. The actions he knew the mayors took were river cleanups.

The irony is that most of the local governments’ dumps are near rivers, a check by the Philippine Daily Inquirer showed.

Remedios Ongtangco said she had suggested that the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) and the EMB undertake a year-round, extensive sampling to identify which zones were actually contaminated with heavy metals and to determine if fishes caught or cultured there were fit for human consumption.

It is the DENR that has the facilities to test heavy metals, said Ongtangco, BFAR director for Central Luzon.

The BFAR has not banned the sale of fish cultured in ponds near the river.

Ongtangco said fish production in the four towns was “minimal.” (Tomorrow: Legacy of pollution)