Government-run Programs and Services

[dancethingy]

YAY, so glad at least something is being done about the trash

I have a question, Is burning trash illegal around here? I think it should be because it just kills my lungs.

[Æsahættr]

Water pressure is so low though in Manila.

[sandrin]

Manila Water, ADB sign tieup for improved access for the poor

MANILA Water Co. Inc. (MWCI) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) recently signed an agreement that would provide piped-in water access to residents of the east zone concession, which the Ayala family-led distributor controls.

The pilot project was signed by Bindu Lohani, director general of ADB’s Regional and Sustainable Development Department, and Antonio Aquino, MWCI president.

The project calls for setting up small-piped water networks along low-income communities in urban areas in Rizal province to be finished in less than a year. Initial projects are expected to benefit a thousand households in Cainta, Taytay and San Mateo. The new household connections will cost the residents only P12 a cubic meter or savings of more than P40 a cubic meter.

“The project is being undertaken in areas where water piped in by utilities is not available to consumers, who have to get their water from vendors at inflated costs,” Lohani said

The project also includes conducting surveys to determine the profile of water consumers and small-scale water providers, setting up a registration system for small-scale water providers, evaluating the pilot project implementation, and developing a tool kit to replicate the effort.

Lohani said the project is in line with achieving the Millennium Development Goal 10 of sustainable access to safe drinking water.
--Euan C. Anonuevo

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink

BY FREDDIE TINGA

The last few days have served as a reminder that rainy season is once again upon us. Communities brave strong wind and heavy rains; floods inundate streets and households; classes and work end up being suspended. It is surprising therefore that we have a problem not only of too much water, but inadequate supply as well. For a country surrounded by water, and with this much rainfall you have to wonder why we still have water shortages.

Taguig City is at the tail end of the water utility district. This, coupled with a limited budget, necessitated Manila Water allowing people’s organizations to bring in water from the main lines, and distribute it to some of the communities of Taguig. This act of cooperation and compassion was supposed to make cheap, clean water available for the first time to many of our communities.

What Manila Water failed to take into account was man’s greed. Some of these organizations proceeded by laying low quality pipes, that ran through canals and gutters and then charged their members double, sometimes triple what you would pay for had you gotten water straight from the tap.

The city government had also built water lines of its own, and working with Manila Water, mandated that organizations connecting to those lines had a ceiling on the price they could charge. This was not the case for the more enterprising water syndicates, who have now gone to court in attempts to prevent the dismantling of their operations. They insist that Manila Water granted them a monopoly when they were allowed to operate in the area. The vast majority of our constituents are clamoring for a direct connection that would free them from the control of these oppressive syndicates, but Manila Water has been put on the defensive by the very people they thought would assist them in their mission.

There is a lesson to be learned here. Water is essential for life. And the more precious something is, the more it is hoarded and the more it blinds the greedy. It is too important a resource to be left at the hands of just any Tom, Dick or Juan looking to earn a quick buck. The thought of an early water connection from these organizations had initially excited our residents, but the reality of overpriced bills and unclean water has quickly turned them off to this quick and dirty solution. If we are to do things right, we must understand that there are no easy shortcuts. It is a lesson that Manila Water, the city government and the people of Taguig are slowly learning.

[Lili]

Provision of potable water is really a perennial problem in Metro Manila and the Philippines. For a water-logged country, that is quite uncanny. We are in the 21st century and people in some areas are still living like in some backward nation sans ready supply of clean, affordable water, which is such a basic amenity -- more important than electricity.

Water is a public utility that should be managed by a public agency or the sale and distribution of which, regulated by government. Water provision and sewerage system management should not be treated as a "for profit" industry. It is a public good. Hence, imposing a ceiling on the price that can be charged to the public is but right. That is basic in macro-economics. Public goods are one of those that should not be totally governed by a laissez faire law of supply and demand system. Government intervention and regulation are needed in this regard.

[dinabaw]

From Dumoy to the world
By Carlos Isagani Zarate
Inquirer News Service


THE DUMOY fresh water is probably one of the best in the world. Ask any Davaoeño and he will proudly attest to this without any hint of exaggeration. Dumoy, a suburban community situated along the southern coastal area of Davao City's Talomo District, is sitting on an aquifer whose source of water is traced to the bosom of Mt. Apo, the country's highest peak.

Experts say that through the process of natural filtration, millions of gallons of rainwater collected in the aquifer have been filtered "crystal clean" beneath the earth's surface by molten rocks and other elements spewed by volcanic eruptions in the past.

"That's the reason why the water in Dumoy tastes pure, fresh and good. It has no foul-smell; its quality is one of the best in the world," said Dominador Lopez Jr., an executive of the Davao City Water District (DCWD).

[dancethingy]

WOW, i want me some of that water!

[WawaY[625]]

Originally Posted by dinabaw

From Dumoy to the world
By Carlos Isagani Zarate
Inquirer News Service


THE DUMOY fresh water is probably one of the best in the world. Ask any Davaoeño and he will proudly attest to this without any hint of exaggeration. Dumoy, a suburban community situated along the southern coastal area of Davao City's Talomo District, is sitting on an aquifer whose source of water is traced to the bosom of Mt. Apo, the country's highest peak.

Experts say that through the process of natural filtration, millions of gallons of rainwater collected in the aquifer have been filtered "crystal clean" beneath the earth's surface by molten rocks and other elements spewed by volcanic eruptions in the past.

"That's the reason why the water in Dumoy tastes pure, fresh and good. It has no foul-smell; its quality is one of the best in the world," said Dominador Lopez Jr., an executive of the Davao City Water District (DCWD).

i remember a few years back,(mga 2 years ago) na may chismis na isang bottled water company nagbebenta ng bottled water na distilled kuno pero Davao water lang pala..oh well whats the diff anyway

[dinabaw]

deleted

[dinabaw]

Yeah i remember that! a rival city i think and they label it in a different name hehehe sa dumoy lang diay nanguha!!!

[ishtefh_03]

never pa kame nag apply for a water services like nawasa, we have our own jetmatic ba yun, my sarili kaming tank na dalawang tubo ang lalim ata nun, and my filter pa yun, kaya wala kaming water bill kasama na sya sa electric bill namin... pero ngayon nag susupply na rin kame ng distilled water para sa inumin... ung alkaline pa na good for the health daw...

[dinabaw]

Just got this article from Yahoo news

Is there a "Fountain of Youth"? If so, perhaps it can be found in the residual mayhem of one of geology's greatest crashes, the point where the African, Asian and European tectonic plates collide. This is a lavishly fertile land of volcanoes and mineral hot springs, a land perhaps more gracious to health and healing than any other, and yet it is so little-known as to be almost abstract.


Almost 80 percent of Macedonia is mountainous, and herein gurgle and effervesce some 65 thermo-mineral healing springs. Just 23 kilometers southeast of Skopje, where the river Pcinja passes through the Katlanovo hills, is the Katlanovska Banja, a "center for prolonged healing and rehabilitation." It seems the anti-spa — no sandalwood incense, kukui nut massage oil, lavender-scented candles or Enya audio here. Its outside is distinguished by the number of broken windows and cracks running down the crumbly walls. The delicate perfume of rotten eggs wafts.


But people don't come here for the ambiance. They come for the waters.


Since the second century B.C. the Romans and subsequent cognoscenti have used these baths to cure rheumatism, arthritis, and a host of chronic, neurological and orthopedic diseases. It's also considered a fountain of youth, and villagers come from all over with plastic bottles to fill for timely consumption.


In a starched white uniform and sensible shoes, Dr. Stefonkos Mateuska, the chief rehabilitation specialist at Katlanovska, tells me the water is hyper-mineralized, a unique cocktail of sulfur, chlorides, carbonates, calcium, iron, magnesium, and more.


In the main bathhouse, which is gender segregated, I strip and ease into the hot water, which is indeed blissfully soothing. In the pool I meet two enthusiasts: Koce Sokolov, who was in an awful car crash that broke his back, and has found near total healing here; and Dusan Antovski, who shows a six-inch scar on his knee from a basketball accident. He says he hobbled here on crutches, and after 20 days of treatments he threw his crutches away, and now he runs.


Later Mateuska tells me she has never seen an American at this spa — it is just not known beyond these borders. But she compares its waters to the spas of Vichy, with one noteworthy difference. Whereas treatments in France often go for $200, or even $2,000, here the soak I just enjoyed was $2.


Can water make miracles?


High in the blue mountains above the village of Drugovo, inside the walls of the Monastery of Sveta Bogorodica Precista, there is a cool mountain spring that serves all denominations with its healing powers. The nun who is caretaking when we arrive tells us that the water here regularly performs miracles. When I ask if she has witnessed any, she cites a 17-year-old girl who suddenly went mute. She came here and drank the water, washed some over her face, then spent the night in the adjacent church with her mother next to her. In the morning she opened the door and her voice rang over the hills.


The nun herself is living testament. In 1999 she and six others, including a three-month-old baby, all who had partaken in the holy water, left the monastery for a road trip. On the second curve going down the steep mountain the car veered off a cliff. It crashed into a tree and was totaled. Yet miraculously all seven, including the baby, were thrown safely from the car before impact. The police later puzzled over the impossibility as they found all the doors locked and the windows rolled up in the smashed vehicle.


The nun says also that many have journeyed here for fertility. After imbibing these sacred waters, which she says are blessed by Jesus Christ, then crawling three times through a low stone arch, and worming thrice through a rosary rope the size of a hula hoop, the visitors almost always create the miracle of new life, she says.


It's not just the waters that cure, but the plants as well. Wherever one sets a foot in Macedonia there are brilliant plants and flowers with naturopathic powers. One of the secrets of Alexander the Great's success was that he and his soldiers knew these properties. There are endemics, such as Zolta koskoina, which was a poultice for battle bruises; Stellaria media, used to heal sword cuts; Arnica Montana, which helped with swelling from a javelin wound; and Narthecium ossifragum, particularly effective in healing fractures from bludgeon blows. When battles went bad, a tonic from saffron was used to alleviate post-traumatic stress syndrome. Then there was the lobe-leafed cemerika, a lethal toxin used by witches and conspirators. Some theorize cemerika was used to poison Alexander the Great, ending his career of conquest at the age of 32.

[sandrin]

Salcon to invest P900M in water infra projects
Inquirer
Last updated 03:29am (Mla time) 07/25/2006
http://business.inq7.net/money/topst...ticle_id=11554

SALCON Pte. Ltd.

"We are willing to engage in water projects, whether it would be under BOT [build-operate-transfer arrangement], as well as design and build projects required by local companies and local governments," K.K. Tan, Salcon general manager for water and environment division, told the Inquirer.

The company was recently commissioned by the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System to build a P700-million sewerage treatment facility for the eastern concession area of Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

Tan said Salcon built Cebu Hilton Resort Hotel's 200 million liter a day water facility, Republic Asahi Glass Corp.' Manila water treatment facility, Victorias Milling Co.'s water treatment plant, and Hitachi Plant Engineering & Construction Co.'s water treatment facilities.Christine A. Gaylican, with INQ7.ne

[Lili]

UP engineers’ landfill is a dream dump

First posted 05:45am (Mla time) July 27, 2006
By Gerry Lirio
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on Page A1 of the July 27, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


IT WILL BE A DREAM DUMP.

Garbage collectors and segregators, and even trucks and drivers will be there in bright, color-coded uniforms -- blue shirts for those who want to get plastic wastes, red for those interested in paper, and green for those looking for broken glass, metals, wiring and other trash.

This is how a group of young engineers from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños (UPLB) envisions a P55-million sanitary landfill project in a 75-hectare mountainous property in Norzagaray, Bulacan, in the next few months.

Once operational, it can service the entire Metro Manila and Bulacan province.

The site in Sitio Tiakad, Barangay San Mateo, is the best ever for a landfill project for its sheer size and strategic location, said the project proponent, chemical engineer Ramon Angelo. “A waste memorial park, a showcase of waste handling in the country,” he said.

“This project will hopefully be a very good example of a facility for proper solid waste management in the country, with all its required components,” said engineer Mylene M. Palaypayon, the team leader.

Angelo said the project was conceptualized in line with the government’s policy to adopt a systematic, comprehensive and sound ecological solid waste management program under Republic Act No. 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, to ensure public health and protection of the environment.

ECC grant

Officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) granted an environment clearance certificate for the project on June 23, with a Category 4 grade, the highest given so far to a landfill project. The document allows the proponent to widen the area to 148 hectares of land in the next few years.

All landfills, it is said, are dumps, but not all landfills are dumps. Unlike an ordinary dump, a landfill is covered with a layer of soil after treating every three to four meters of garbage. Aside from soil cover, a landfill, before receiving waste, is spread with composite soil liner to protect the watershed.

A landfill is also treated with enzymes to prevent pests and foul smell.

At least 10 major dumps and landfills service Metro Manila. Among these are Payatas, 23.2 ha; San Mateo, 73 ha; Clark, 85 ha; and Carmona, 63 ha.

A former dump, the 22-ha Smokey Mountain in Tondo, Manila, was closed by the Ramos administration in May 1993. It had a Category 2 rating; San Mateo, Category 3.

The Norzagaray landfill is expected to receive between 2,000 and 3,000 tons of garbage a day, compared with Clark’s 1,500 tons and Payatas, 1,200 tons. The 63-ha Carmona has a daily capacity of only 1,000 tons, while Smokey Mountain had 1,500 tons.

Inverted pyramid

Tons of garbage usually form a huge “pyramid-type mountain” daily in existing dumps and landfills. But in Norzagaray, which is on a mountaintop 80 meters above sea level, it will be an inverted pyramid with an estimated depth of 60 meters.

“We will never have a landslide here, the kind Payatas had experienced years ago,” Angelo said. It will take at least 10 years to fill up the 18.8 ha of the Norzagaray landfill that is currently being developed, and about 20 years for the entire 148-ha property.

Bulacan province has a total waste generation of about 700 tons per day and Quezon City, 1,700 tons. Assuming that all local government units in Bulacan and in Quezon City will tap the new facility, with waste diversion of 15-20 percent per day, the 18.8-ha facility is estimated to have a life span of 10 years with a total volume of 8,820,000 cubic meters.

Construction of the access roads will be finished this month. The landfill can start receiving wastes from neighboring towns and cities in August or September.

This early, two American companies have expressed interest in helping Angelo’s group develop the area. The group will shoulder the project’s initial funds.

Colors galore

Once operational, garbage segregators will wear hard hats, rubber boots, gas masks, goggles and gloves, aside from color-coded uniforms. Supervisors and security people will wear yellow uniforms, while engineers and executives will be in white.

The landfill will be operational 24/7. It can accommodate 200 garbage trucks a day.

To date, however, the Norzagaray landfill has not been authorized to receive hospital and other toxic wastes. “We are capable, but we are not allowed yet. But we do have provisions just in case toxic wastes land upon us by accident,” Angelo said.

Angelo discovered the site while looking for a “mine-out” or a source of soil for areas left by cement mining companies in Norzagaray.

The site is 14 km southeast of Norzagaray’s town proper, bounded in the east by the Sierra Madre mountain range and on the south, by the town of Montalban in Rizal province.

It is accessible not only to Bulacan communities but also to northern Metro Manila and some towns of Rizal. It is 21.5 km from Commonwealth Road in Quezon City and 9 km from the Novaliches-Norzagaray national road in Barangay Igay, San Jose del Monte City in Bulacan.

Forest ambience

If the C-6 road project pushes through, the landfill will have a main entrance there, only 5 km from the town proper of San Mateo.

The area was once considered a rustic place with pristine scenery, good water quality, ambient air and ecologically sound environment.

Based on a study done by Palaypayon’s group, the site, although devoid of any primary forest growths, still has the ambience of forest scenery due to its rolling to hilly terrain, with steep cliffs of high relief in some sections of the deeply incised narrow valleys.

The view from the top still offers a panorama of abundant vegetation. Different varieties of fruit-bearing trees are mixed with secondary forest growths and tropical grasses and shrubs.

Groundwater is considered poor. The water bearing horizons are tight, indicating a very low hydraulic conductivity due to the inherent characteristics of the rock suite in the project.

Angelo abandoned his initial plan to dig soil for mining sites after the owners of the private property said they wanted to develop the rugged terrain into a residential-commercial area. Some of them met with Angelo and his team but chose a custodian to deal with them on the agreement to lease and develop the property.

A team of experts

He later commissioned a former DENR official to draft a proposal, but the work was rejected by the department for its infirmities. The ECC was granted only after a second group, the UPLB team led by Palaypayon and Marloe B. Sundo, submitted a more comprehensive concept design.

Palaypayon is a civil and environment engineer. Sundo is also a civil engineer who majored in transportation engineering. Both teach at UPLB and are experienced in environmental engineering, primarily on landfill design.

“We are working as a team of different technical expertise, one is working on transportation engineering and surveying, one is working on drainage engineering, one on geotechnical engineering, and I am into environmental engineering,” Palaypayon said.

“We are composed of relatively young engineers. But we have our own capacities to technically address the needs of the project,” she said.

First phase

Norzagaray is her team’s second landfill after San Jose del Monte. The first of the project’s three phases will focus on an 8.87-ha portion on the west, bordering the national highway and adjacent to the proposed alignment with C-6.

It will cover all the project components -- sanitary landfill, materials recovery facility, dumping and tipping pads, compost-fertilizer pit and leachate ponds -- as well as access road, drainage facility, administration building, canteen, water supply system and workers’ quarters.

Phases 2 and 3 involve expansion to the rest of the property.

[marites4]

its a big problem when the population doubles in 30 years. kaya mga tsong at tsang hinay hinay sa baby making.

[oz.fil]

introduce paper bags, reusable bags and bio degradable plastics...

[ergit222]

San Fernando's Sanitary Engineered Land Fill
The first ever sanitary engineered landfill in San Fernando City was chosen by the World Bank (WB) as its model for a Design-Build Operate (DBO) type of landfill project all over the world is nearing completion.

[vince_rilian]

hehehe, go UPLB! hmmm, the eco waste management of LB-Sci-Nature City is worth citing....

[LordCarnal]

What's the difference between a sanitary landfill and a landfill as stated above? We have a sanitary landfill here in Cebu and I remember during our class fieldtrip, I saw some sort of pipes (similar to water/gas pipes) protruding from the ground. What are these for?

[vince_rilian]

those pipes are for allowing the "biogas" produced to be vented out of the covered garbage....

[sandrin]

Sanitary Landfill must be off limits to garbage hawker and squatters. Only registered dump trucks and registered (employed) garbage sorter must be allowed in the vicinity.
The operators should hinder the invasion of individual garbage hawker that would later on squat in tha area. And it's time for smokey mountain to be totally closed down. Palagay ko isa yan sa contributor sa kabahuan ng Manila Bay. The Payatas dump site should be closed down also, lalo na malapit pa sa la mesa, eeew.