Cebu City creeks to be rehabilitated

• Source: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/local-news/2016/09/11/cebu-city-creeks-be-rehabilitated-496960
• Wednesday, September 14, 2016

By Princess Dawn H. Felicitas

THE Estero-Parian creek will soon be rehabilitated.

A university in Cebu City along with an international chemical corporation already started identifying the pollutants in the creek so it will be treated.

Engr. Ricardo Fornis, assistant dean of the University of San Carlos (USC)-College of Engineering, said their school together with the DOW Leadersip in Action is undertaking the project as a step toward realizing sustainable water management.

“It (water pollution) is a big problem that needs to be addressed. We are only working on the first step here, the water characterization. We are determining what are the pollutants of the river and the level of pollution. You cannot clean the river if you do not know what to clean. After it will be determined, we will find a technology appropriate to clean these pollutants,” he said.

According to Fornis, the water characterization of the Estero-Parian Creek started in July this year and will take about one year.

He said USC along with the DOW personnel already got three water samples from the Estero-Parian Creek—one each on M.J. Cuenco Ave., near the Gaisano Main and beside the 138 Mall along Colon St.

The samples, he said, will be submitted to a laboratory in USC for study. http://www.zamboanga.com/z/index.php?title=Cebu_City_creeks_to_be_rehabilitated&action=edit&redlink=1 Fornis said USC and DOW picked Estero-Parian Creek as a pilot area after officials of Barangay Tinago approached USC and sought their help in cleaning the waterway.

They hope to replicate the rehabilitation of the Estero-Parian Creek with other rivers and water bodies in the city.

The study being is being funded by DOW as part of their corporate social responsibility.

Fornis said the local government unit should fund the implementation of the rehabilitation project.

“What we do is we offer technical solutions. The one who decides to embrace the technical solution should be the government,” he said.

Fornis, together with his colleagues and students, in the USC and officials and personnel from DOW gathered last Wednesday at the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc.-Eduardo Aboitiz Development Studies Center in Barangay Parian for a forum on water.

DOW, which is based in the United States, is a provider of chemical, plastic and agricultural products to its clients and make innovations to help address challenging problems, such as the need for clean water among others.

They shared their best practices, such as the rehabilitation of the Hot Springs Creek, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio and the Lower Jordan River in Israel.

DOW provided the solutions in the rehabilitation of these waterways.