Manila Bay rehab: Cimatu eyes ‘lethal solution’

Environment Sec. Roy Cimatu on Thursday vowed to lead the rehabilitation of Manila Bay with a “lethal solution” to comply with a 10-year-old Supreme Court order for the government to clean up the coastal areas of Metro Manila.

At a press briefing, Cimatu said he intended to apply the same “political will” seen in the six-month rehabilitation of Boracay Island, which he called a “success,” to address the sources of pollution on Manila Bay.

“This problem of Manila Bay is one that we have to frontally solve. We will come up with a lethal solution in order to hand over a cleaner, better Manila Bay to the next generation,” he said, without elaborating.

In a 2008 decision, the Supreme Court directed 13 government agencies, led by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), to “clean up, rehabilitate, and preserve Manila Bay … to make [the waters] fit for swimming, skindiving, and other forms of contact recreation.”

With another year drawing to a close, Cimatu said the court order must finally be carried out especially by the DENR.

He said he had directed the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (Namria), an attached agency of the DENR, to prepare maps of the river systems in the capital as a “starting point” of cleanup efforts that start in early 2019.

The DENR has also set up a meeting with local officials to    draw up plans for the relocation of thousands of informal settlers living along rivers and estuaries that drain into the bay.

“We initially looked at what is causing the problem in Manila Bay and found out that the biggest culprit are the esteros. So we decided to plug everything that flows into the sea,” he said.

The department, he said, is also looking at requiring Metro Manila’s two water supply concessionaires, Maynilad and Manila Water, to construct water treatment facilities—a matter raised on Wednesday by Rep. Lito Atienza, a former Manila mayor and DENR secretary.

Cimatu said that for Metro Manila’s usage, water treatment plants will be built in Quezon City and Taguig.