By Maria Carmen S. Apuli | Resource Mobilization Coordinator
Key leaders from partner Barangays 718, 719 and 720, Zone 78, Manila and official representatives of project stakeholders (concerned government agencies and De La Salle University (DLSU) – Manila being the Partner Adopter of the estero, gathered last November 2016 to finalize the drafting of the Environmental Action Plan for the remaining period of 2016 to July 2017 for the Estero De Maytubig and Estero Fort San Antonio De Abad.
Chairman Oscar Espiritu of Barangay 718 presented identified major activitites for the rehabilitation of Estero De Maytubig and Estero Fort San Antonio De Abad viz. 1) Engineering, 2) Awareness Building / Information Dissemination, 3) Enforcement and Compliance to Relevant Environmental Conservation and Protection laws - Supreme Court Mandamus, 4) Deputation of an Environmental Police, and 5) Potential Entrepreneurial activities for waste materials gathered.
On the Engineering aspect, activities identified by the barangay leaders and project stakeholders includes the following: 1) establishment of a Materials Recovery System (cart fabrication, daily hauling of garbage by the community and the construction of a storage garbage segregation facility made of steel matting, and a staging area for the collected waste) facilitated by the Chairperson and the Barangay Council, 2) Dredging of Estero de Abad by the City Engineering office of the Metro Manila Development Authority and DPWH, with the assistance of DLSU, 3) Installation of a CCTV camera in specified garbage storage area and monitoring of hauled garbage, 4) Maynilad’s regular (quarterly) dislodging of septic tank, and 5) Estero Water Quality Monitoring to be undertaken by the Environmental Management Bureau and DLSU.
Another major activity identified by the group includes the conduct of environmental protection and conservation awareness building activities such as house-to-house leafleting, barangay assembly and dialogue with community members, regular announcement through public address on environmental protection and conservation, urban and vertical gardening in coordination with the Bureau of Plant Industry, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Agriculture and DLSU, Mural Painting and Poster and Slogan Making contest for the youth through the Department of Education’s Division of City School and seminar on health and sanitation.
The third major activity that the barangays plans to undertake in close coordination with the barangay council and other concerned agencies is enforcement of and compliance to Supreme Court Mandamus (e.g. adoption of the Solid Waste Management Barangay Ordinance, 100% waste segregation at source and segregated collection per waste collection and segregation provisions, creation of waterways watch or River Warrior and the 24-hr. monitoring of the estero, survey to determine areas illegally encroached and number of informal settlers along estero, percentage of estimated total area and number of illegal encroachments on water bodies that are permanently cleared) consistent with current laws and relocation provisions.
To support initiatives on enforcement of relevant environmental conservation and protection laws such as of Republic Act (RA) No. 9003, RA 9275, the group further raised the need to deputize an environmental police.
Potential entrepreneurial activities were recognized to arise with the collection of plastic bottles, selling of collected plastic bottles gathered everyday by barangay street sweepers.
The action plans crafted during the November 2016 workshop sessions concretize the primary objective of the Lasallian Environmental Sustainability and Governance (L-ENVISAGE) component which is to contribute to the transformation of communities and its ecosystems and to mainstream good governance towards environmental sustainability and resiliency. Specifically, these activities support the attainment of one of L-ENVISAGE’s milestones which is to restore the ecological services of Estero Fort San Antonio de Abad and Estero de Maytubig and raise public awareness on the intrinsic value of the estero.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
