SOME operators of floating cottages in the municipality of Cordova, Mactan Island in eastern Cebu admit to have openly thrown the liquid waste collected from their cottages into the open sea.
As this developed, local officials in two Cordova barangays admitted to the lack of regulation to manage the cottages operating in their areas. To dispose of the collected waste, Ramirez said that every time their guests left the cottage, his lifeguard would remove the container underneath the portable toilet holding the human waste.
Ramirez said he decided to shift to operating a floating cottage in Cordova after seeing how lucrative it had become. Barangay Catarman chief Alejandro Aro said that while he had not received complaints against cottage operators, he admitted that they have no ordinance that manages the collection of human waste generated by floating cottage operators.
He said the funds collected from issuing the barangay business clearances were not enough to cover the expenses for solid waste management and disposal. As for Basiliote, his barangay charges a regular garbage collection fee from floating and fixed cottage operators based on the accumulated waste collected from them per week.
Ochea said their sampling activities are designed to determine the quality of seawater based on seven parameters: pH level, temperature, dissolved oxygen, total suspended solids, nitrate phosphate levels; presence of oil and grease, and FCL. The seven parameters are based on DENR’s Water Quality Guidelines and General Effluent Standards of 2016.
EMB 7 personnel also found high levels of oil and grease, particularly in Bantayan Wharf where the town’s temporary market is located, and in a private resort in Poblacion where some fixed cottages were situated. Ochea said the presence of FCL in aquatic environments indicates the presence of human and animal waste contamination which can cause intestinal illnesses that are harmful to humans such as Esherichia coli contamination.
Several testing stations in the two barangays also exceeded the FCL level including Station 2 , Station 3 , Station 4 , Station 5 , Station 6 , and Station 7 . “A waste management facility should be installed, like a catchment in our CR , and it should be determined where that waste will be brought so as not to contaminate our seas,” she said.Barangay officials of Catarman and Poblacion, where most of the fixed and floating cottages were found, told SunStar Cebu that the industry began sometime in 2020 when the town’s coronavirus disease restrictions were slowly loosened to make way for the revival of local tourism activities.
Both officials said only residents of the town were given priority to build and operate fixed and floating cottages in their barangays. The municipal government under then mayor Mary Therese “Teche” Sitoy-Cho had received a letter from the DENR dated Jan. 9, concerning the floating cottages that had been operating along the coast of Barangays Poblacion and Catarman, which were considered “no-build zones.”
Upon receiving the EMB’s recommendation, Suan immediately issued orders to suspend the operations of fixed and floating cottages in his town.Before the Provincial Government stepped in, Suan told SunStar in an interview last Aug. 24, that when he first started his term last July, the floating and fixed cottages were already in operation.
In his report during the stakeholder’s meeting with the governor and concerned government agencies, Suan said there were 103 floating cottages and more than 300 fixed cottages. Suan said there was no proper procedure for the fixed cottage operators to handle and dispose of the accumulated solid and liquid waste.
Aside from this, Garcia insisted that floating and fixed cottages be anchored in place before and at the start of the temporary closure. Garcia described the fixed and floating cottages as “illegal structures” and “an environmental disaster in the making” for the pollution they were causing.For an official of non-government environmental arm Oceana Philippines, the fixed and floating cottages in Cordova should not have been allowed to operate in the first place.