Abra lone district Rep. JB Bernos is pushing for the creation of a government body tasked with protecting the Abra River, which has seen its waters drastically polluted by haphazard development over the years.
Bernos filed House Bill No. 3119, which calls for the establishment of the Abra River Basin Development Authority (ARBDA), after he lamented the river’s worsening conditions due to uncontrolled industrialization, forest denudation, mining, and rapid population growth.
“Through this bill, we will save the Northern Philippines’ most important water network by regulating commercial and residential activities affecting the Abra River,” Bernos said in his bill’s explanatory note.
Under the bill, the ARBDA will craft a 25-year Abra River Rehabilitation Roadmap and Master Plan to ensure that various stakeholders are guided in all sorts of developments while still maintaining the livability of the nearby communities.
The lawmaker pointed out that the ARBDA “will help ensure that the discharges do not exceed the allowable established limits for the river’s natural waste assimilation capacity.”
According to Bernos, “ditoy Amianan ti balaytayo. (The North is our home.) If we cannot protect the Abra River, we fail not only our environment but also the families in the North whose lives and livelihoods are tied to its waters.”
“We have to protect the Abra River for the present and for future generations.”
The lawmaker noted that as early as 2005, chemical analysis of the river conducted by the St. Louis University showed that its water had already reached dangerously high levels of hazardous substances.
He added that poor drainage and lack of comprehensive flood control systems have caused widespread flooding in communities and farmlands and paralyzed the local economy.
Under the bill, the ARBDA will craft a 25-year Abra River Rehabilitation Roadmap and Master Plan to ensure that various stakeholders are guided in all sorts of developments while still maintaining the livability of the nearby communities.
The ARBDA will help ensure that the discharges do not exceed the allowable established limits for the river’s natural waste assimilation capacity.
The ARBDA will also work closely with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Public Works and Highways, Department of Agriculture, National Irrigation Administration, and the Abra provincial government in providing adequate, dependable, and reliable wastewater treatment facilities and sewerage systems in all their authorized service areas.
It will also periodically conduct comprehensive scientific surveys, studies, field sampling and laboratory testing, and GIS-mapping of the Abra River Basin System to monitor, evaluate, update and analyze the physical, biological, chemical, hydrologic, bathymetric and hydrographic characteristics including the socio-economic profile of the stakeholders, trade, industrial and commercial profile, biometric tagging and identification of informal settlers, parcellary land use and zoning aspects, mapping of critical effluent discharge areas, and historical and tourism elements, among others.
Other responsibilities include clearing and dismantling all illegal structures especially along all esteros and waterways that drain into and branch out of the Abra River; engage in experimental community-based integrated wastewater management technologies and strategies, including the collection and disposal system, sewage and septage treatment, collection and disposal of floating garbage, solid waste by-products, sludge or contaminated sediments; and establish and enforce anti-pollution standards and water quality guidelines on domestic, municipal, commercial and industrial wastewater and effluents being discharged into the river system, among others.
