BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan ordered concerned government agencies and various offices of the local government to be ready in responding to the rehashed negative issues against the city which is reportedly being revived to justify efforts by some interest groups to taint the city’s image in both the national and international scene.
The local chief executive articulated that all the previous issues on the city being the most polluted city in the country among other similar issues that cropped up over a decade ago have been already satisfactorily addressed but it seems that there are some individuals and interest groups who want to continuously ruin the image of the country’s undisputed Summer Capital in the eyes of outsiders.
“We cannot understand why are these rehashed issues being opened up at this point when all the said issues and concerns were clarified by no less than the concerned agencies involved in the preservation and protection of the city’s environment,” Domogan stressed.
He instructed officials and technical personnel of the Cordillera office of the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB-CAR) and the City Environment and Parks Management Office (CEPMO) to cull out the pertinent data on the status of the city’s air quality tracing back to over a decade ago to show to those who want to put down the city that much had already been done through the years to address the serious problems caused by the rapid migration of the people from the countryside to the urban areas primarily because of improved economic activities.
Regional Director Reynaldo S. Digamo agreed with the remarks of Domogan, saying that the fair results being recorded by the agency’s ambient air quality monitoring machine in the central business district area should not be concluded as the overall air quality in the city because there are more areas in the city that have recorded good air quality readings, that it would be illogical to conclude the city’s air quality is bad when in truth it ranges from good to fair.
Moreover, the EMB-CAR official explained that the fair air quality in the city is recorded in areas where there are congestions of motor vehicles like the central business district area, thus, it is not again correct to make a conclusion that the overall air quality in the city is again fair because there are more areas that have recorded good air quality through the past several years.
In terms of water quality and solid waste management, he again argued that the local government, in partnership with concerned stakeholders and the private sector, had been instrumental in the implementation of various interventions that have contributed in improving the water quality in major river systems around the city like the ultimatum given by the inter-agency task force on piggeries to piggery owners for them to institute the needed stop gap measures to allow them to operate until November this year.
He claimed that the agency is ready to present pertinent documents that will prove that Baguio City has done a lot in the implementation of the needed interventions that has sustained the significant improvement in air, water quality and the state of solid waste disposal in the city as a whole under the present dispensation.
By Dexter A. See