Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu assured President Duterte that Boracay island \u201cis no longer a cesspool\u201d and will be ready to accept visitors on October 26.<\/p>\n
Appearing at a congressional hearing conducted by the House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, Cimatu boasted of the vast improvement in the country\u2019s premiere resort island, which was closed due to serious sanitation and environmental issues.
\nLast month, the House panel conducted an ocular inspection of the island resort to determine the progress of the government\u2019s bid to clean it up and put in place much-needed sanitation infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Congressmen proposed that water and sewerage systems in the island should be patterned after the existing Metro Manila model.<\/p>\n
\u201cI say that we will be opening Boracay on Oct. 26\u2026 Categorically, I am saying that Boracay is no longer a cesspool,\u201d Cimatu assured. <\/p>\n
Undersecretary Ernesto Adobo added that the DENR was \u201con track\u201d with its timeline and was \u201cjust awaiting the completion of the paving of the roads.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Adobo, government has been concentrating on the \u201cdemolition of occupants in the wetlands, because that\u2019s directly related to our objective of cleaning the water.\u201d<\/p>\n
The DENR directive also enjoined hotels and resorts in the area with more than 50 rooms to set up their own sewage treatment plants (STP), while those with fewer rooms would be given the option to share facilities.<\/p>\n
BIWC general manager Joseph Michael Santos made an appeal that 23 large establishments and 607 smaller ones. which could access the main road sewer be allowed to use that line for the time being.<\/p>\n
Santos said only four large establishments and 76 smaller ones were solely connected to the decommissioned beachfront sewer and would really need to set up their own STPs.<\/p>\n
He also warned of serious threat to mangroves, saying that allowing establishments to have their own STPs will contribute to serious pollution issues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu assured President Duterte that Boracay island \u201cis no longer a cesspool\u201d and will be ready to accept visitors on October 26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,76,77],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5234,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5233\/revisions\/5234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}