Bacolod’s Fecal Coliform Contaminates Murcia

SOMETHING SMELLS

Negros Daily Bulletin

By Alan S. Gensoli

As many of you have read in our columns, and are beginning to read in our Sunday Flyers distributed in churches, since November 2008 there have been three tests conducted on the waters in, around, and underneath the open dump at Purok Acacia, Brgy. Felisa. The three water tests, commissioned by the Bacolod Anti-Baha Alliance, the Environmental Management Board (EMB, a downline agency of the DENR), and by the BACIWA which has five pumping stations near the dumpsite, all showed the presence of fecal coliform in varying degrees. 

Earth-shaking revelation, but I’m afraid the three tests are not conclusive. And this worries me. For water tests to be conclusive, they have to be conducted regularly and repeatedly for a period of one year. And for the tests to say that the water is safe for human consumption, fecal coliform must not be detected in more than 10% of the times the waters were tested. If, for instance, 12 water tests are conducted, fecal coliform may appear only in 1.2 times of the test. Beyond that, the water should be declared unsafe. 

So, whose job is it to conduct these tests? And why aren’t these tests being conducted regularly? These delays will only snowball into further delays in the final construction of a sanitary landfill in Felisa, or elsewhere. I’m beginning to suspect the delays are intentional. 

Considering that all three tests conducted in 2008 showed the presence of fecal coliform, it is highly probable that fecal coliform will also appear even if we tested the waters of Felisa 12 more times. So, who is benefitted if we do not conduct these water tests? Whose interests are served if we do not conduct these water tests? Certainly, not the public’s. Perhaps, those who are afraid to face reality that the waters of Felisa are irreversibly contaminated and so the sanitary landfill cannot be built there. 

Allow me this scenario: Time will soon come when it is most imperative that we build this sanitary landfill, because Pres. Arroyo, as Chair of the Presidential Task Force on Climate Change, has ordered our LGU to stop dumping garbage in our open dump. Thus, our LGU must build the sanitary landfill posthaste, disregarding the need for scientific water testing - no time for that! Isn’t this situation far better than testing now and finding fecal coliform in the water each time we test? I always like to run future scenarios because I don’t want people to think us so dumb as not to have suspected the inevitable. If I’m lucky, by running future scenarios those with ill-intentions will reconsider because I have revealed them. But I tell you, I’m rarely lucky. Either that or others are just callous. 

The way we in Bacolod City have neglected or tolerated water contamination by poorly managed garbage has become scandalous. A couple of weeks ago, Murcia Mayor Sonny Coscolluela invited me to join him in a pulong-pulong at Purok Tompok, Brgy. Blumentritt, Murcia town. Apparently, at the mayor’s inquest, DENR Reg. Dir. Bienvenido Lipayon sent Mayor Sonny a copy of the results of the water test conducted by the EMB, showing that water sample taken from a water pump in Purok Tompok was contaminated with fecal coliform.

Purok Tompok, which is part of Murcia, is actually located just across the open dump of Bacolod in Purok Acacia, Brgy. Felisa. The two are separated only by the Cabura Creek, which itself has been proven highly contaminated with fecal coliform by all three water tests. So now, our garbage has contaminated the groundwater source of Murcia. Imagine what Murciahanons now have to say about us Bacolodnons? That we don’t know how to keep our garbage and fecal bacteria to ourselves, we have to infect our neighbors, too? Boy, what would our mothers say of us? 

I have always wondered how fecal coliform has surfaced so prominently in all the water tests conducted thus far. Since fecal coliform is bacteria coming from human and animal feces, how did fecal coliform get to the open dump? The people who live at the dumpsite are few and far between. Their domesticated animals are even fewer and farther between. What explains the prevalence of fecal coliform then? 

Plastic bags, that’s what. In many squatter settlements of Bacolod City, there are no public, let alone private, toilets. People make do with “sando” plastic bags, the kind we get from groceries and sari-sari stores. Human pooh-pooh are wrapped in these and thrown with the rest of the household garbage, to be picked up by the city’s garbage trucks, and dumped at Felisa. You wonder, are there enough squatters to produce enough pooh-pooh, to infect a four-hectare dumpsite with fecal coliform? Of course, there are. There are approximately 300,000 of them in our midst. If we had all of them stand at the dumpsite, each one would be standing on a mere 0.13-square-meter space. So yes, we have enough squatters to contaminate our open dump with fecal coliform. And then some, for Murcia! 

I appeal, therefore, to all civic clubs and politicians: Next time you want to put up a waiting shed, please consider a public toilet? 

And to the DENR, please conduct the water tests regularly so that we can have a reliable assessment of the water condition in Felisa soonest possible time. If our sanitary landfill is built in Felisa without a reliable hydrologic assessment, the DENR will be condemning us and future generations of Bacolodnons to unsafe drinking water. When that happens, only God can forgive the DENR.*