Cebu City’s official opening of a septic treatment plant tomorrow is a long-awaited initiative that should have as its ultimate goal the rehabilitation of rivers and other waterways in the metropolis.
City Hall expects the plant to be reason enough for private septic haulers to stop dumping untreated wastes and fouling our water bodies.
Four companies have been working with the city for more than one month during the plant’s test run. With the passage of the septage management ordinance, the city will collect a fee from firms that deposit wastes in the facility.
Under the ordinance, barangays are also tasked to operate a septic treatment plant. We hope this goes a long way in freeing our aquifers, the underground reserves that hold precious water, from contamination.
This cooperation between the government and the private sector should go beyond the law’s minimum requirements. How about an honest-to-goodness campaign to clean up Cebu City’s five major rivers?
Cebu City has been coasting along without a central sewage system for decades. And we dare call Cebu a competitive, world-class city without this basic facility.
The foul truth is that all toilets and drainage pipes lead to the sea and whatever creek or canal that would receive the wastes.
We pay private septic haulers to do the dirty job of taking night soil and effluents somewhere we don’t have to think about.
Sewers carry runoff water, rain and road debris.
Septage includes human wastes and effluents of establishments flushed out of the bowels of the city’s over 1 million population.
Indiscriminate dumping has to come to an end.
The objective of running the treatment plant in the North Reclamation Area is not income generation for Cebu City but sanitation and a filth-free city.
We urge septic haulers to take advantage of the plant and also call on barangay leaders and residents to show some discipline and refrain from making dumpsites of our rivers.
The creeks that run through the city don’t have to be cesspools that need covering up with more concrete.
We only have to look at the waterways in barangays Tejero, Pari-an and Pasil to see the sad combination of urban blight and indifference.
In progressive cities in Europe and parts of Asia, rivers are alive with non-smelly water, vegetation and walkways that have become tourist attractions by themselves.
One day, we hope to see Cebu City’s rivers and creeks restored as proof of life. The work to achieve this comes in the long haul.
For now, we can start with a new treatment facility to channel septic wastes away from the sea and rivers.
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