EVEN AN AVERAGE downpour alarms people living along a river that cuts across San Pedro town in Laguna and Muntinlupa City in Metro Manila.

A string of typhoons last year caused the 8-kilometer Cuyab-Tunasan River to swell, flooding communities by as deep as 10 feet in San Pedro and Barangay Tunasan in Muntinlupa and forcing residents to flee to high grounds.

To prevent a repeat of the deluge left, Muntinlupa and San Pedro officials linked up to declog their common waterway. ?This is in preparation for the rainy season,? said Jet Pabilonia, chief of the Lake Management Office and the city environment and natural resources officer.

To date, seven truckloads or 15-20 cubic meters of trash have been removed from the river.

When Tropical Storm ?Ondoy? struck in September 2009, at least 3,000 families were dislocated in San Pedro and 5,000 families in eight lakeshore villages in Muntinlupa.

Trash

Monico Badeloso, 61, whose house is near the river mouth on the side of Tunasan, about 500 meters from Laguna de Bay, said the river rose to chest-high when Ondoy came. ?We stayed at the evacuation centers for two months and returned only when the flood subsided,? he said.

Over the decades, Badeloso said, garbage was dumped into the river, turning its water murky and filthy. ?All those trash are coming from the villages in the upper area of San Pedro. The garbage run down the river until they are trapped here,? he said.

The river used to be 2 meters deep but is now only ankle-deep due to heavy siltation brought about by garbage accumulation, Pabilonia said.

Officials of both municipalities have owned up to the obstruction. ?Let us not blame our neighbors or our village captain or whoever,? he said.

?The thing is people keep on disposing their trash into the waterway. The problem is the residents? (attitude),? said Antonio Almeda, San Pedro environment and natural resources officer.

The situation persists despite the ordinances on waste management being enforced by both LGUs.

?We have a regular schedule of garbage collection. All they (residents) have to do is to place them at the right pick up points at the right time,? Almeda said. About 80 percent of garbage dumped into the river is household waste.

River council

The environment offices are expected to finish declogging and dredging the river in a week. They had so far collected 2 to 3 tons of garbage last week, Pabilonia said.

In the long run, a joint river council will be formed to do regular cleanups and apprehend violators of waste management laws. It will also redesign an old trash trap to check the flow of solid wastes from the Laguna lake.

Jet Pabilonia of Muntinlupa said the cleanup would be expanded upstream in Barangay San Antonio in San Pedro, particularly targeting the mango trees and banana plants that were toppled by Typhoon ?Basyang?s? winds early this month.

?We have requested help from the DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways) in Region 4 and NCR (National Captial Region) to help in pulling the debris out of the water,? he said.