Advocacy Worth My Time

Today, all the LGU executives of Laguna came out with an ad in the Philippine Star titled “Let’s Save Laguna Lake – Rebuild a Productive and Healthy Community.”  This ad was signed by the Governor and all the mayors of the 30 municipalities and cities in Laguna.  If there’s an advocacy that I’m willingly going to join, it’s saving Laguna de Bay.

In 1973, I wrote a feature article titled “Lost Paradise in the Making – Laguna de Bay.”  It was published in the Philippine Farms and Gardens.  The article pointed out that the waters of Laguna de Bay 25 years earlier (circa late 40s) were very placid and clean, even potable (according to old residents in coastal towns of Laguna) direct from the lake itself.  The article predicted that 25 years into the future (that would be about 1998) the waters of Laguna Lake would be severely polluted.  That’s what happened.

I’ve continuously advocated for the cleaning up of the lake since I first wrote about it 38 years ago.  Now come the LGU executives of Laguna under the leadership of Laguna Governor “ER” Ejercito, publicly enjoining P-Noy to help in saving Laguna Lake.

The theme of this advocacy is “Let’s Save Laguna Lake – Rebuild a Productive and Healthy Community.”  The one-page ad that appeared in the Philippine Star today (January 25^th), I think says it all. 

Laguna lake is a 90,000-hectare inland body of water, the largest in the Philippines, and has a total basin of about 382,000 hectares.  Some say that this area is larger than the entire city-state of Singapore.  Based on the census of 2008, it is said that 13M people consider the coastal towns of Laguna and Rizal as their home.

Former Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) General Manager Edgardo Manda referred to it as the “biggest septic tank of human and industrial waste” from Metro-Manila.  According to a number of studies conducted by UPLB and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005, the water quality of Laguna Lake has deteriorated to below the quality of Class C water (irrigation water), a far cry from its quality even in 1973.  Researchers of UPLB and other agencies have found toxic metals in the lake (lead, zinc, copper, chromium, to name a few).  In fact, until today, you would still get DDT in the silt of the lake deposited there by irrigation waters from the agricultural lands in Laguna and Rizal in the 50s and the 60s when DDT was the main ingredient of farm chemicals.  No wonder, fish kill is a common occurrence these days.

In the decade of the 60s, the average depth of Laguna Lake was 8 meters.  Today, the average water depth is 2.5 meters (even less in some areas) and the remaining 5.5 meters is all silt – a far cry from what it was in the decade of the 60s.  Friends used to bathe in the Malakoko Beach in Mayondon, Los Baños, Laguna in the 60s and they recall standing on sand at neck-deep water, just about 10 meters from the shoreline.   That’s all gone now.

Saving Laguna Lake, indeed, is an important advocacy.  We must all join this effort.

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