Philippine E-Journals

Clogged and Reeking Creek: Who Is to Blame?

Casimiro B Jr Juarez | Salvador A. Aves | Luvismin S. Aves

Discipline: Governance, Society

 

Abstract:

People have always preferred to settle along bodies of water because these provide them with food, livelihood, transportation, and entertainment. Companies have also built their factories, offices, and trading warehouses along rivers, lakes, and bays because these provide easy access to transportation and free dumping place for industrial effluents. The influx of people and industries near these bodies of water has given rise to extreme pollution, and clogging, and to the obstruction of the water. The abused and misused waterways have exacted their own revenge on their abusers: they swell up during downpours, drowning people and destroying homes and crops and infrastructure; they emit sickening stench and harmful gases; and they harbor germs and vermin that make people very sick, even die. This paper discusses the poverty, don’t-care attitude, local government ineptitude, and finger-pointing that caused the pollution and clogging of the Bitan-ag Creek in Lapasan, Cagayan de Oro City, and the measures recommended to save the creek from “dying” and to spare the communities living along the creek from nature’s wrath.