Imperial Palace dumping sewage in sea! MUST BE STOPPED

[naborbong]

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Dapat ma tan-aw jud na nila.... kita ang looy ana....

[silverio]

It's sad to hear such a big resort doing such thing. I hope the local government looks into this, otherwise, we will be the ones to suffer in the end. It is also bad for Cebu tourism.

[tikud]

NOW they want to use the City's Water Treatment Facility ... HUH!

After all those denials .... unstable power supply, pumps not working well .....etc. etc.
now they want to use the Gov't facility for their commercial purposes?

How could they have been granted ECC?
It is very easy to compute the required waste water facility needed for Imperial to put up.
It's no brainer, how could they build something not capable of their total demand?

ingon sila the pipes leading to the sea has been removed already ...
QUESTION: unya dili lang to sila pa MULTA? how many cubic meters of untreated effluent ila gui dispose sa environs? abi na sakpan unya gui stop.... OK na ta?

tks to the dedicated and concerned divers like John M. and company for bringing this up.
Let's all help and support them for this is everybody's concern...

[diatabz]

Not good enough for me. Further investigation will help.

Not good enough? You know what the tests have shown? There's festering sh|t in the water. Did you even see the pictures? When is it going to be "good enough?" When a bunch of Korean tourists go down with GI infections?

[potterboy]

This is what happens when we are too concerned of our bank accounts instead of the welfare of a greater number of people.

Ngano gud tawn naa ni ECC nga naa man diay ni tubo nga ga-"leak" sa dagat.

Tanga nalang gyud kaau ang city hall?

[tingkoy13]

may rasad wala ko maligo sa ilang dagat, didto rako sa pool kay daghang siksi...

[Tirong-say]

If this is true, dlikado gyud pud na nga klase sa waste,
mahimo nang source sa pathogens ug makadaot pud gyud sa dagat.

[jz]

they should build their own water treatment facility for such a big hotel and proper sanctions should be imposed.

[Kesha]

Wala man ayo na issue kaayo.... Pero kita ko sa news ani.... katong citizen patrol.... nga naa dako na pipe underwater....

[sharkey360]

The waters off Maribago, in Lapu-Lapu City, Mactan, teem with rich marine life; an array of high end resorts draw tens of thousands of local and foreign tourists yearly.

So it was a shock to the diving community when a photo surfaced on September 27, showing a huge underwater pipe spewing waste water into the sea.

Bayan Patroller and diver-photographer Yvette Lee, said the local dive master who took the photo described the water, traced to the Imperial Palace Waterpark Resort and Spa, as “yellow and icky.”

Immediately, the close-knit diving community flooded the resort management and the local government and tourism and environment offices with complaints.

The resort management claimed it was an isolated case, a mere “leak” in its underwater pipe. In a statement sent to BMPM, the resort management also said that, “on Oct. 1, local City Health Officers visited the resort and inspected the (sewage treatment plant) STP facilitiy, and concluded that the area was very clean, and there was no foul smell inside the facility.”

But that same afternoon, the local government ordered the resort to “stop discharging the treated water into the ocean,” according to Kyra S. Cabaero, assistant public relations manager, in an email exchange with Lee.

The cease and desist order came after a private firm commissioned by the city government returned alarming results of its tests on the water coming from Imperial Palace’s pipe.

In a telephone interview, Region VII Environmental Management Bureau chief Allan Arranguez told BMPM that tests commissioned by the local government showed E. coli level of 1.6 million MPN/100ml—a million higher than the normal level of between of 2,000 to 10,000 MPN/100 ml. (MPN stands for most probable number).

In an interview with BMPM, Cabaero said she has not seen a copy of this commissioned test.

The Imperial Palace statement quoted an EMB study as saying: “…there is a very big possibility that the laboratory results of the sample at station 2 would fail the DENR standards due to many factors. Major factor is that the samples collected were contaminated mostly of seawater from the area. A lot of motorboats for rent were docked at the area beside the resort. Usually the operators of these motorboats reside inside these vessels and contribute to the quality of the seawater of the respondent. It was also discussed that most of the wastes generated buy these operators were discharged directly to the sea. So, it could be concluded that it is not just the respondent who could be blamed for the failure of the laboratory results of the samples taken at station 2.”

That statement, however, did not refer to the last study but to earlier tests, indicating that high E. coli levels had earlier been monitored. Cabaero, however, could not give BMPM the date of that study or the exact E. coli level found.

That quote, however, could explain why the diver-photographer who took the sewage photo said he noticed murkiness several months back.

Faced with combined pressure from divers and the local government, resort management finally agreed to cut and haul in its underwater pipe and seal any opening to the sea.

Although it claims that its treatment plant problems, allegedly caused by frequent power interruptions, are now solved, the resort management will just use treated water for its garden and a fishpond it plans to build.

Cabaero’s email explained that water coming from the treatment plant is"not potable but clear and with no foul smell at all.”

“After complete treatment at the STP, treated water is stored in a tank at the resort and is eventually used as garden water. Future plans include using the excess treated water to fill in a fishpond.”

The DENR has also done its own water tests but has still to see the results. But if the statement quoted by the Imperial Palace is any indication, the agency needs to tighten monitoring of the waters in this upscale beach district.

There is also a question of accountability. If earlier tests showed already higher than normal e coli levels, why was no sanction imposed on resort management or those boats that reportedly add to the pollution?

At a time when Lapu-Lapu City is campaigning to promote Mactan Island to the international community as Cebu’s tourism hub, the last thing officials and residents need are government officials and tourism entrepreneurs dropping the environmental ball.

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/-depth/10...oxins-paradise