Dumaguete City’s multi-million peso project on septage wastewater treatment plant continues to attract tourists as one of the major best practices of the city government.
“Today, the wastewater treatment plant also remains to be the subject of masteral studies on environmental engineering, from construction to operation,” said environmental management specialist Edgar Caro of Dumaguete City Environment & Natural Resources Office.
The City’s septage management system is the first locally-funded project in the country and serves as a model of a viable local initiative for preserving valuable water resource and protecting the health of the constituencies.
The program also highlights the potentials of a positive and productive relationship between a local government unit and a government-owned and controlled corporation.
Caro said “The septage is proving to be technically and economically viable and in the next three years, the septage management system’s capital costs will be fully recovered and the city’s income therein will be redound back to the community in the form of other environmental programs and projects.”
In 2004, Dumaguete City was selected as one of the pilot sites of the project “Local Initiatives for Affordable Wastewater Treatment,“ a USAID-assisted project.
A city-multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary group conducted a situational analysis of the city’s existing and potential sources of wastewater, water resources at risk of contamination, local sanitation practices and environmental management ordinances.
With that, an important issue raised was the risk of the city’s groundwater from the approximately 20,000 inappropriately constructed and maintained septic tanks. A related concern was the unregulated and indiscriminate disposal of raw and untreated septage.
To address these issues, the city government enacted the septage management ordinance in April 2006 which mandated proper designing, construction and maintenance of septic tanks, regular dislodging, treatment of septage, payment of septage “user fee” to recover capital and operating costs of septage management system, among others.
In 2008, the construction of septage treatment plant started at Barangay Camanjac using the city’s development fund.
Six months later, a memorandum of agreement signed between the Dumaguete City Water District and the city government for the implementation of the septage management system.
Under this agreement, the water district will collect and transport septage to the treatment plant, with “user fee” of P2.00 per cubic meter consumed by water concessionaires while the city operates and maintain the septage plant.
A non-mechanized treatment plant, purely biological and relies on sunlight, time, micro-organisms and plants to stabilize and convert contaminants in septage into soil conditioner and water for irrigation.
Septage collected by vacuum trucks from residences, business establishments and institutions are discharged into receiving tanks or grit chamber to remove large particles.
The effluent from the maturation ponds undergoes biomechanical filtration at a planted gravel filter as a final and polishing process wherein roots of “calla lily” plants further degrade pollutants.
Caro said with the city’s continued effort to combat global warming, ENRO’s staff beef up its environmental protection programs and participated in a series of hands-on training of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. (PIA)
