CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (PIA)—Cagayan de Oro City Water District (COWD) is eyeing to construct a modern septage treatment facility to provide better and safer water waste disposal to address water pollution and contamination in the city.
According to COWD officials, to start the project, their office requires an initial capital requirement of around P200 million to construct the facilities plus operating expenses as they aim to have at least ten vacuum trucks that need to be maintained and chemicals needed to treat the septage water before it can be released into the river, while the solid waste will be used as a soil conditioner.
"The septage management program is one of the solutions that may help solve the water pollution and contamination, and we are embarking on this with the help of the various partners, which started with USAID basic care and now with the Vitens-Evides International (VEI) under the ridge to coast rain to top projects," says Engr. Welcome V. Batar Jr, COWD general manager.
He emphasized that because the Cagayan de Oro river is classified as a class A river by the Department of Environmental Management Bureau, the effluent of the septage treatment facility that they will be building will also be classified as a class A facility that complies with the latest and stringent DENR DAO 2016-08 and DAO 2021-19 requirements on water quality guidelines and general effluent standards.
With such plans, the COWD proposed that the city be divided into five zone areas based on USAID studies, and a fully mechanized septage facility be built on their 2,000 square-meter property in barangay Balulang, where talks with the barangay council have already started.
The COWD chief further said that the facility will be safe for the environment and the community, with a guarantee that no foul odors will leak into the site.
As soon as the septage facilities are operational, the water district explained that an environmental fee of P2.50 per cubic meter of water consumed will be added to the customer's existing water consumption bill and that a customer is entitled to one desludging every five years.
They also indicated that with an average consumption per customer of 20 cubic meters, the customer will only pay around P3,000 after five years, which is much cheaper than the P6,000 to P8,000 desludging fee that a private septage contractor collects.
The COWD chief said that when compared to private septage contractors, their customers will receive specialized services such as septic tank inspection two weeks prior to desludging, DOH-compliant vacuum trucks will be used during collection to remove hardened sludge in ten minutes with no spills, and septage will be processed in mechanized facilities.
The facility's construction is expected to begin this year, following the supreme court's mandamus that a highly urbanized city has a septage treatment facility in place by the end of 2022, which was then extended to 2023 due to the pandemic.
The COWD is currently in the process of obtaining the documents required to proceed with construction, such as documents from the barangay council that allow construction of the said facilities and the holding of public hearings due to the additional septage fees.
Currently, the COWD is in the process of obtaining the documents required to proceed with construction, such as documents from the barangay council that allow construction of the said facilities and the holding of public hearings due to the additional septage fees. (JAKA/PIA-10)
