Legacy Pollution

Thursday, 16 September 2010 00:00

Written by Neric Acosta

BELLAGIO, Italy – This breathtakingly idyllic lakeside region in the Italian Alps is perhaps the inappropriate venue for a conference on toxic wastes and ‘legacy pollution.’ But given the severe and far-reaching health impacts of contaminated bodies of waters, air and agricultural land in over 80 countries around the world, Lake Como’s pristine waters could well serve as a constant reminder of how natural ecosystems should remain undefiled to benefit humanity.

Those of us participating in a roundtable on ‘legacy pollution’ in developing countries – mercury, cadmium, arsenic, lead and persistent organic pollutants accumulated over time and left indisposed after mining activities have ceased or military bases have long left – are given the lowdown on the extent of the problems in many countries in the developing world.  In many of these low to medium income countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the former Soviet Union, communities continue to suffer from the debilitating effects of mercury in the water, lead in the air, or pesticides and heavy metals in the soil. While most toxic pollution is localized, other pollutants, like mercury, are trans-boundary and find their way into food chains in oceans, the main sources of protein for archipelagic countries like the Philippines.  

We learn that in a Global Inventory of Project of the Blacksmith Institute and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), supported by the European Commission, the Asian Development Bank and Green Cross Switzerland, the Philippines has some of the most contaminated sites, where toxic pollutants exceed international standards, directly affecting about three million people. According to the Global Inventory, for instance, the Marilao-Meycauayan-Obando River System in Bulacan, is one of the most contaminated in the world with high concentrations of arsenic, lead, cyanide, cadmium and mercury.  Both formal and informal industries, such as lead acid battery recycling, gold and precious metals refining, jewelry making, tanneries and firecrackers or explosives factories line the congested banks of the meandering tri-river system.

Manila’s once-magnificent Pasig, object of many poets’ or composers’ musings, is virtually dead, choked with domestic refuse and the effluents of countless industries.   The Manila Bay and the Laguna de Bay have sadly become gigantic cesspools.  As are rivers and bodies of water in the abandoned or existing mining sites – both large-scale and artisanal -- elsewhere in the country.  To date, government has yet to get the United States to own up to what have reportedly been unmanaged or untreated loads of toxic wastes in the two former military bases in Subic and Clark – and work out a compensatory or long-term remediation plan for the contaminated areas.

Legacy pollution poses a heavy, long-term burden in that the “polluting activity is defunct and the polluter no longer traceable or responsible.”  But without serious clean-up effort, these sites present very real environmental and health damage.  We only have to recall Marinduque’s Boac River two decades ago, contaminated by the breaching of the tailings pond of the Canadian mining giant Placer Dome.  Reports of high occurrences of skin disease, miscarriages, still births, birth defects, heart ailments, leukemia and cancers have been legion. To date, litigation and class suit action against the multinational company, which has since divested ownership of the Philippine operations, remain locked in legal battles, here and abroad.

In Mindanao and many other mineralized areas where large and small scale mining activities operate, the lack of proper regulation or basic enforcement of environmental laws, almost guarantee the proliferation of future ‘legacy pollution’ sites.  Diwalwal in Compostela Valley is a highly-contested zone of thousands of small-miners and interests that collude with local authorities and even police and military forces in a mad gold rush, stripping the biodiversity-rich mountain fastness of this southern region, and dumping mercury into the rivers and streams that feed into the Davao Gulf.  

Legacy – or ‘future legacy’ – pollution sites may not be in the immediate radar of government programs and budgetary allocations for clean-up and remediation interventions, but addressing this problem is inextricably linked to more than just environmental imperatives – clean air, safe groundwater supplies, protected wildlife and biodiversity, conserved topsoil.  Public health is also put at great risk, especially the well-being of women and children belonging to poor and marginalized sectors. 

This interaction of economic and industrial activity with ecology and human health have lasting implications for food and water security; to allow this to go the way of unsustainable, destructive, and life-threatening practices will only lead to negative and viciously cyclical impacts for poverty and economic growth.    

Swimming in the placid, almost luminescent-in-sunshine waters of Lake Como, one realizes how such a simple recreational activity is -- or should be -- a fundamental right for all.  And how, beyond the providing for material security, the only real legacy we ought to bequeath to our children and all future generations is a ‘safe and healthful ecology.’

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites