WB funding pushed for cleanup of MMORS

MANILA, Philippines - World Bank funding for the cleanup of the highly polluted Marilao-Meycauayan-Obando River System (MMORS) is being pushed by the not-for-profit Blacksmith Institute (BI), a New York-based think-tank that ranked the MMORS as the fifth dirtiest in its 2005 survey of 200 rivers all over the world.

The BI works to solve pollution problems in the developing world. Two of its officials arrived a week ago for an ocular inspection of the MMORS.

John Keith, director for operations, and Jim Darling, BI technical adviser, on Thursday met with Bulacan Gov. Wilhelmino Sy Alvarado, who heads the MMORS’ water quality management governing board.

Alvarado told the BI experts that a no-nonsense enforcement of local and national laws to stop the dumping of industrial and household wastes into the river would first have to be institutionalized before any massive cleanup effort is started. Institutionalizing enforcement would include breaking old community habits pertaining to waste disposal.

Keith and Darling – accompanied by Jenny Amparo, BI’s country coordinator based in UP Los Baños – also visited the lush mangrove nursery of Ecoshield Development Corp. in Obando’s Barangay Salambao. A flood-proof state-of-the-art engineered sanitary landfill is being built here with the full encouragement of local and national government agencies.

Ecoshield, the provincial government and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) have a standing agreement to initiate the cleanup of the MMORS with whatever resources available, just to get the long overdue undertaking started.

For this undertaking, Ecoshield has donated a one-hectare property in Meycauayan to serve as the site for a septage treatment facility where toxic wastes scooped out of the river could be treated.

It also pledged to donate two trash-boats to help the government get started with the river rehab.

Apart from lending its technical expertise to the cleanup effort, it also pledged to dedicate 37 percent of its landfill capacity to accommodate the toxic river wastes and all the garbage to be collected from all of Bulacan’s coastal towns.

As early as last year, Alvarado had declared the cleanup of the MMORS one of the top priority programs of his government. It was Alvarado who encouraged the participation of the private sector in the initiative to rehabilitate the highly polluted river system.

“Our purpose here,” Keith explained, “is to help local groups come up with a good proposal to get a loan grant from the World Bank.”

Asked how much of World Bank assistance would be needed to have the MMORS really cleaned up to the point that fish would be jumping as in the old days once again, Keith said.