Green company treats waste water in Laguna

THE TREATMENT facility of Envirokonsult Equipment and Services in Bay, Laguna. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

A Filipino-owned company has been providing free services for treatment of septage—a fluid mixture of sewage solids, liquids and sludge—to government offices, schools and hospitals in Bay town in Laguna province.

Since October, Envirokonsult Equipment and Services has been offering its services as part of a pilot project soon after it opened its waste treatment facility on a 3,300-square meter lot in Barangay (village) Puypuy.

The desludging activities afforded the host municipality will run up to the end of the year, said the company’s education and information consultant Mio dela Cruz.

Once the septic tanks are emptied, it will take roughly five years before these need to be cleaned again, Dela Cruz said.

At first, he said, the presence of the waste treatment facility was opposed by local leaders, who raised concerns about possible leaks into the town’s water system or damage to resort businesses in the periphery.

“But after seeing how we operated, they realized it was safe. Some garden owners would even ask for the treated solid waste which they used as fertilizer,” Dela Cruz said in a phone interview on Thursday.

Envirokonsult operates on a “fully mechanized and odorless” process, according to him.

Tight-sealed vacuum trucks collect the septage, which is then filtered and treated with enzymes. The treated water, according to standards set by the Department of Health and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, is safe for household reuse, except for drinking, or return to the natural streams and tributaries of the Laguna Lake.

The P70-million treatment plant can handle 60-100 cubic meters of waste water a day for a service cluster of about 50,000 households and 3,500 business establishments.

Envirokonsult, which has an office in Quezon City, started over a decade ago as an equipment provider to water concessionaires in Manila, before it recently ventured into septage treatment.

Its chief executive officer, Anthony Gedang, is an advocate of clean water management and of the Pasig River rehabilitation, Dela Cruz said.

The company is working out a contract with water concessionaires in Laguna and plans to expand its business in the Visayas and Mindanao.