ILOILORiver

THERE ARE 2.6 MILLION CARS in Beijing. This has caused pollution in the Chinese capital to rise three times above the acceptable level. This condition is an environmental concern that threatens the Beijing Olympics. Some suggest that 90 percent of the cars need to be removed from the streets during the games for the emissions to clear up. The world is waiting to see what plans the Chinese government has to reduce emissions in the city.

The Beijing experience tells us that it is easy to pollute the air, but difficult to clean up.

A HIGHLY respected and much loved Buddhist monk was asked what he thought was the cause of human suffering. “Greed,” was his prompt reply. Psychoanalyst-philosopher Erick Fromm defines it as “a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” It is a form of addiction which impacts not just on the individual but also on the values and attitude of the person’s inner circle of family, friends and network.

THESE DAYS, when you go around Iloilo City, most likely you would not miss the dumps along the road which just pile up day after day and the smell that lingers, becoming more putrid every time rains come. Of course, the garbage and lumps of earth by the road get collected regularly but people kept on bringing out the remaining trash and sludge from their houses that the job of hauling them to the dumping ground seems endless. It was almost a month after the floods, but the rotting odor has tarried – a pellucid reminder of the killer water.

BANGON Iloilo. Masarangan ta ni! This is the battle cry of Mayor Jerry P. Treñas for rebuilding the City in the aftermath of Furious Frank which left twenty eight dead and 255,000 homeless to rally the Ilonggos towards recovery and restoration efforts.

It is not just an order to stand after a fall, but to rise and move on. It is an order to pick up the pieces and put them back altogether again; to let go of what has been lost and to find ways to fill the void.

“WATER is not like oil. There is no substitute. If we continue to take it for granted, much of the earth is going to run short of water or food—or both.” This insight comes from a recent study made by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the International Water Management Institute entitled “Global Water Outlook to 2025: Averting an Impending Crisis.”

A WATER crisis is threatening the world, and the Philippines is not immune to it. As a matter of fact, the United Nation appears to be a notch more concerned about this than about global warming. And rightfully so, because water is life, and no water means no life on earth.

The Philippine archipelago, made up of 7,107 islands, is located in southeastern Asia, between the Philippine Sea and the South China Sea, east of Vietnam. The Philippines has a population of 91,077,287 and an adult literacy rate of 92.6 percent. Only about 85 percent has access to safe drinking water, the remaining 15 percent, which constitutes the 40 percent who are under the poverty line, does not. The median age is 22.7 years and the Infant Mortality Rate is 22.12 deaths per 1,000 live births. The Average GDP growth is about 5 percent between 2002 and 2006.

COULD anyone react positively to an emerging food and energy crisis when one is already saddled with high cost of living and getting by with a monthly salary that can barely support the basic needs of the family? It may be a case of seeing a glass of water as either half full or half empty, but I think only a bleak economic situation can force people to become aware of environmental issues and seriously consider the benefits of simple living. This is not to trivialize the current scenario but environmentalists like my friend and fellow CDN columnist Gloria “Golly” Ramos must be delighted by recent events.

ILOILO CITY is a flood-prone area no doubt, what with its poor drainage facilities and shrinking waterways that could no longer accommodate floodwaters from the Tigum-Aganan watershed area, causing a massive deluge as the two rivers merge at the outskirts of Jaro to form the now narrow Salog river. But flooding takes place only when there is heavy rain, and not when there’s none. That is why it is surprising that these past days, overflows happen despite the absence of a downpour. Notably, this phenomenon occurs during high tide.

WHILE THE Iloilo River is not as grand as the Chao Phraya River in Thailand, there are similarities between the two bodies of water. Both navigable, they have become septic tanks for homes, industries and hotels in cities with sizes respectively proportional to their length and breadth. The 11-km Iloilo River, actually an arm of the sea, traverses 35 barangays with a total population of 53,830, serving as natural sewerage of the Iloilo City proper and the districts of Lapaz, Molo and Mandurriao. The same role is played by the Chao Phraya, which runs from north to south for 372 km from the central plains to Bangkok and the Gulf of Thailand, passing 10 cities.

POLICIES ARE important to governance. Without policies, governments can’t protect, bring order and help their constituents live peacefully together. All the functions of governments – to make laws, to provide services and to keep order – involve policies. Laws, executive orders, and even the parliamentary rules of order that govern the enactment of laws, are sets of policies. The delivery of services is defined by guidelines and procedures (read: policies). Keeping order means making the people respect and uphold the laws of the land (again, read: policies) through reward and penalties.

IN AUGUST 2007, Rep. Raul T. Gonzales Jr. filed House Bill No. 1338 which seeks to create the Iloilo River and Muelle Loney Development Authority. Under the bill, the authory will be tasked, among others, to prepare and design an integrated, complementary and coordinated phase by phase development program of the Iloilo River and it inland harbor at Muelle Loney in order to support existing national development policies. The bill has since been referred to the House Committee on Government Enterprises and Privatization for its consideration and action.

COMPLETED in 2003, the Iloilo River Development Master Plan blueprints the rehabilitation, improvement and sustainability agenda proposed for the Iloilo River by the Iloilo City Government in partnership with the Iloilo Business Club, the Asia Foundation and the United States Assistance for Environmental Programs.

DONE in 2006 by Pamela Gerrez V. Tañeza and Paul Philp of the University of Oklahoma’s School of Geology and Geophysics, this study investigates the occurrence, distribution, concentration and potential sources of polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) at the Iloilo River using geochemical techniques. PAHs are ubiquitous environmental pollutants that have received special attention due to their highly mutagenic and carcinogenic properties.

DONE in 2004 by Herminia Francisco and Jessica Salas, this paper analyzes the presence or absence of elements needed to have an effective system of watershed management in the Maasin Watershed, Iloilo Province. It concluded that: a) both the legal and institutional structures needed to support watershed management effort are in place; b) there is evidence of a strong social capital existing in the upland and lowland communities; c) there is an adequate level of technical capital investment to sustainably manage the watershed; and d) there is sufficient financial resources to undertake various site development initiatives.

STOCKHOLM—As much as half the water used to grow food worldwide is lost due to waste, experts said at a Stockholm conference that wrapped up Friday, pointing out that the squandered resources are a major contributor to global water shortages.

“There is huge waste and loss of water through food that is produced, since roughly 50 percent of the food that farmers grow is lost or wasted,” said Jan Lundqvist, who heads the scientific program at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines has received an $8-million grant from the Spanish government to pursue a program together with the United Nations to help it cope with climate change, a problem that has resulted in substantial economic losses for the country, especially its farm sector.

Ralph Recto, newly appointed director general of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), said the issue of climate change was one of the major threats to the country’s economic development.

MANILA, Philippines — Air quality in the country improved by 33 percent from 2003 to 2007, the Environment Management Bureau (EMB) told the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Clean Air Tuesday, but lawmakers were unconvinced about the report.

At the same time, Senator Pia Cayetano, who as chairperson of the Senate committee on the environment co-chairs the oversight committee, said that the P197-million air quality management fund collected from vehicle licensing fees and smoke-belching fines from 1999 specified in the Clean Air Act has not been released.

PARTICIPANTS in an international wetlands conference have issued a declaration urging recognition of the importance of wetlands and calling for basic wetlands research.

Around 700 experts from 28 countries met in the city of Cuiaba, Brazil, on the edge of the vast Pantanal wetland, to discuss the importance of wetlands and strategies for their preservation and reconstruction at the 8th International Association for Ecology (INTECOL) International Wetlands Conference last week (21–25 July).

Flood-hit communities still have no drinking water one month after typhoon “Frank” (international code name: Fengshen) devastated Iloilo.

“Most of our water sources were contaminated during the inundation,” said Guillermo Hisancha, vice mayor of Pavia, about nine kilometers west of the capital city, which was gravely hit by the calamity.

The Philippines is rehabilitating its mangrove forests, but local researchers say the government is planting the trees in the wrong areas and pumping large amounts of money into big but less successful projects.

Mangrove forests have been shown to protect shorelines during storms and typhoons, and preventing coastal erosion.

UNITED NATIONS — More than two billion people around the world still lack adequate sanitation, according to a UN report released here Thursday.

It warned that barring major gains over the next seven years, the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015 would be missed.

SYDNEY — Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday accused humanity of squandering the earth’s resources to satisfy its insatiable appetite for material goods, in one of his strongest-ever messages on the environment.

He told about 150,000 pilgrims gathered in Sydney for World Youth Day celebrations that during his long flight from the Vatican to Australia, he was struck by the wondrous views from his plane, evoking a profound sense of awe.

Dust levels in Jaro, Typhoon Frank’s worst-hit district here, have exceeded air quality standards, the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) in the region disclosed.

The dust came from the dried up mud left by Frank’s murky floodwaters, explained EMB Regional Director Bienvenido Lipayon.

ECONOMIC developments can attract squatters looking for “easy money” in a progressive urban center. And with the threat of dislocation is their hope that they will consequently be fortunate to be given relocation sites.

Iloilo City Urban Poor Affairs Office (ICUPAO) chief Roy Firmeza associated the burgeoning population of squatters to fast developments in the metropolis.

THE ILOILO RIVER is located between N 10°41’30” –N10°42’30” Latitude and E 122°32’00” – 122°35’00” Longitude. Iloilo River flows from west to east, with an estimated specific sediment discharge rate of 8.0 cubic meter per year per square kilometer, and a catchment area of 93.1 square kilometer.

THE outbreak of World War II signaled the end of the feverish commercial activity in the Port of Iloilo. Consequently, it also marked the death of Iloilo as the “Queen City of the South”. The Japanese destroyed a sizable portion of the commercial section of the city and a large chunk of the Iloilo harbor. Thus, by the end of the war, Iloilo City was almost reduced to ashes and its pier became a ghost frontier.

IN THE 1920s, based on the 1927 Iloilo Telephone Directory and other printed materials at that time, many commercial establishments at the pier and even on the shorter side streets of the city advertised themselves. In Muelle Loney, the leading firms were the Compania General de Tabacos de Filipinas, Lizarraga Hermanos, Koppel Industrial Car & Equipment Co., Pacific Commercial Co., Warner Barnes & Co. Ltd., Smith Bell & Co. Ltd., Sing Joco & Co., and the Visayan General Supply Co. Inc. They were either Spanish, Chinese or European-owned.

WHEN THE Americans took over the governance of the Philippines, the first major improvement done in Iloilo was with the port in the Iloilo River because of its leading importance in Philippine economic activities at that time.

THE OPENING of the Port of Iloilo along Iloilo River in 1855 not only resulted in the expansion of trading activities and increase in population in the town of Iloilo but also led to the development of the sugar industry. The Iloilo River provided for a safe entry point and storage for sugar which were subsequently loaded on ocean-going vessels bound for other countries.

LONG BEFORE the coming fo the Spaniards to the Philippines, Iloilo River was already noted to be a busy artery of commerce to the towns of Molo and Jaro. This will explain why when the colonizers came to Iloilo, they already found a considerable number of Chinese residing in Molo and a thriving settlement in Jaro which, in early times, was known as Salog. The river was also a rich fishing ground for fishermen who had started putting up huts along its banks.

The damage wrought by Typhoon Frank to the Tigum Bridge in Cabatuan showed how enterprising Filipinos, or the Ilonggos in particular, are. Residents in the area developed their own version of a Roll-on, Roll-Off facility to ferry motorcycles across the river. The rate is PhP 20.00 per motorcycle.

HERE are photos of the destruction caused by Typhoon Frank on two bridges in Cabatuan, Iloilo. The Tigum bridge in Barangay Tabucan, Cabatuan is the gateway to this town 21 km west of Iloilo City, while the Imelda Marcos Bridge in Barangay Amerang of the same town serves as its link to Maasin town.

RIVER fishermen call them danlak, Hiligaynon for slimy. I don’t know what they are but they rise from the grounds along the bank of the Iloilo River at the Sooc-Navais area. They appear to be like jellyfish or some sort of oil as they don’t mix with water. I believe they come from waste, having noticed piles of garbage nearby.

PULO actually means island but when we hear the word pulo, what comes to our mind is an islet, or a small island. Unknown to many, considering that it is hidden from the busy parts of the city, there is a pulo at the Iloilo River.

THIS photo of the Iloilo River Wharf, circa 1920-1930, forms part of the Wisconsin Philippine Images Collection of the University of Wisconsin, but the rights to the photo belongs to the US National Archives.

1922 photo showing structures along the Iloilo River Wharf that includes the Iloilo Customs House, warehouses and nipa huts. It also shows sailing ships and three men in a small vessel in the midground.

Satellite image of Iloilo City showing the meandering Iloilo River obtained from GoogleMaps

OLD postcard, circa 1900-1920, showing houses along the Iloilo River

GMA News and Public Affairs produced the first Philippine documentary on climate change titled Signos: Banta ng Nagbabagong Klima. The documentary is narrated by actor Richard Gutierrez who is an active environmentalist and Greenpeace advocate. The documentary premiered on April 20, 2008.

THIS video is based on a classic article by Donella Meadows, and interprets the world
as though it were a village of just one hundred people.

THE board of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) has approved a multi-billion-peso project that will improve water quality at the Pasig River, reduce health risks and enhance ferry transportation operations in the area.

MANILA, Philippines – “Pretty Pasig, pretty river. Wear your best bouquets. Happy morning, dawning, give her all your brightest rays….” goes a rhyme that Dr. Jose Rizal wrote for a play titled “Along the Pasig.”