BAGUIO CITY – Hotel, restaurant and condominium owners in the city were warned by the Cordillera office of the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB-CAR) to comply with existing environmental laws and related rules and regulations to help sustain efforts to preserve and protect the city’s environment for the benefit of the present and future generations of Baguio residents.
EMB-CAR Regional Director Reynaldo S. Digamo underscored the importance of the cooperation of the public in the overall efforts of the government to improve the state of the city’s environment because residents and visitors alike directly and indirectly enjoy the benefits of the good state of the local environment.
“We have to make sure those generating pollutants in our environment should be obliged to implement the appropriate mitigating measures so as not to contribute in the deterioration of the state of the city’s environment, but instead, embrace the adoption of compensatory measures to lessen the impact of the pollutants in the ecosystem,” Digamo stressed.
During a recent gathering with hotel, restaurant and condominium owners and managers, the EMB-CAR official mandated the establishment owners to secure their waste water discharge permit, designate an accredited pollution control officer which could be done by clusters in case there will be shortage of the said officers and secure the necessary certificate of dislodge from their private contractors or certificate of sewerage connection to the city’s sewage treatment plant which will be issued by the City Environment and Parks Management Office (CEPMO) before the end of this month to prevent them from being issued the notice of violations with the imposition of the corresponding fines for every noted violation of the law.
Based on existing laws and related rules and regulations, Digamo revealed that establishment owners who fail to secure and present their water discharge permit and those who will be found to have been discharging waste water that exceed the prescribed standards will be fined from P10,000 to P200,000 per day while those establishment owners who fail to assign an accredited pollution control officer in their businesses will be fined a maximum of P50,000.
According to him, the agency is also setting its sights on the owners of transient houses in the different barangays of the city to compel them to comply with the stringent environmental laws and related rules and regulations by minimising the discharge of waste water that exceed existing standards so as not to pollute the major water systems in the city.
He claimed that there are numerous establishment owners who already started complying with the initial requirements imposed by the agency as part of their compliance to existing environmental laws but there are still a good number of establishments that have yet to comply with what has been asked from them during their previous engagement.
Digamo pointed out that the agency is simply exercising its mandated duties and functions and people should understand they are just doing their work to preserve and protect the environment so that the present and future generations of residents will enjoy a good state of the ecosystem.
By HENT
