Greenpeace to DENR:
Implement pollution disclosure to save our rivers
By GREENPEACE
January 16, 2013
MANILA –
Environmental group Greenpeace today welcomed the Department of
Environment and Natural Resources’ (DENR) recent moves to address
water pollution in the Philippines but said that the government agency
must do more to save the country’s polluted water bodies. Greenpeace
said that the first step must be pollution disclosure, or mandatory
reporting by factories about the chemical waste produced by their
operations.
“Designating Water
Management Quality Areas (WMQA) to some of the country’s rivers and
waterways is a good move. But we need to see bigger steps in pollution
prevention if the DENR is serious in fulfilling its mandate to keep
our waterways clean,” said Abi Aguilar, Toxics Campaigner for
Greenpeace Southeast Asia. “We urge DENR Secretary Ramon Paje to
immediately eliminate chemicals already identified as hazardous and
implement pollution disclosure for companies that dump their wastes
and by-products in our bodies of water,” she added.
Water pollution is one of
the biggest problems affecting the Philippines. According to the DENR,
as many as 50 of the 421 rivers in the country are already considered
“biologically dead.” Biologically dead rivers no longer contain any
oxygen and cannot support any but the hardiest kinds of species.
This situation has prompted
the government agency to identify eight rivers as Water Quality
Management Areas, in pursuant to the Clean Water Act of 2004 – an
important step in protecting river systems. Rivers under protection
include the Sinocalan-Dagupan river system in Pangasinan, the
Marilao-Meycauayan-Obando river system and areas within the Laguna
Lake Development Authority’s jurisdiction in Luzon, the Tigum-Aganan
watershed and the Iloilo-Batiano river system in the Visayas, the
Silway River and the Sarangani Bay in Mindanao, the San Juan River
system in Metro Manila, and most recently, the Taguibo River in Agusan
del Norte. Greenpeace believes that the fact that these rivers were
declared as WQMAs means that its present condition requires serious
protection and management action by its local government and
stakeholders.
Greenpeace has long called
for the establishment of a Pollution Release and Transfer Register (PRTR)
policy that would also give communities and other stakeholders the
right to access information about these pollutants. PRTR policies have
been instrumental in preventing pollution in countries like Japan,
Australia and Canada. Currently, the DENR has no complete data on what
chemicals factories are discharging into our rivers and lakes.
Communities living around these bodies of water suffer because they do
not know what chemicals are present in their locality, and how their
water supply is slowly being contaminated.
“Now is the time for
Secretary Paje to identify and investigate the pollution hotspots in
our river systems. If a PRTR is in place, then industries/facilities
would be more careful with their discharges into our waterways. This
is an important first step in the elimination of hazardous chemicals
in manufacturing operations and ensuring public safety,” Aguilar said.
In order to prevent toxic
pollution in our water bodies, Greenpeace is demanding that the DENR:
a. Expand the Priority
Chemicals List (PCL) to include those that have already been
identified to potentially affect human health and the environment;
b. Speed up the elimination
of priority hazardous chemicals with specific timelines;
c. Immediately set up a PRTR
so that the public can access data on pollution.
Greenpeace also calls on the
communities to be vigilant about the operations of the industries in
their localities, to protect their own rivers, and to call on the
government for better policies for cleaner and safer water.