LAHUG CREEK

I HAVE LIVED ALL MY life beside the Lahug Creek in Cebu City. I have followed its source up and beyond Busay Falls beginning from the waterfront area near Escaño Shipping Lines office. The creek, or canal, have been part of my playground when I was a student at the nearby Tejero Elementary School and I have traversed along its length and width as an escape route from pursuing childhood enemies, playing catch me with neighbors or just gathering gobies – a tiny fish which we popularly called “rainbow”.

In those days the creek was already dirty but living things still inhabit therein and all about. Aside from the fish, tadpoles and toads share the creek with an occasional tortoise or monitor lizard. Rats ran roughshod in the night over the riverbanks foraging on morsels of food flushed down from the houses lining the creek with their population being picked one by one by juvenile pythons. Clumps of bamboo grow along the banks found upriver and is home to avians, reptiles and insects. But not anymore.

And according to my late grandmother, Purificacion Lavilles, they used to wash clothes by the creek during “peace time” - the years before World War II – and her brothers would place two nets across the creek during high tide and wait for the water to subside and then harvest the fishes caught in between the nets. During Liberation my great uncles would play franks with the American soldiers and wait for them to squat at the riverbank after supper their white rumps a perfect target in the dark of their taut slingshots. When I was small, I used to see a small boat with a sail and outriggers traveling up and down the creek every high tide.

As far as my memory could remember, the creek have been dredged of silt thrice, the last time in the year 2000. In the early '90s the creek bed had rose to a few feet providing flood waters to overflow the embankments and denying tide water to gain access to the narrow channels due to the unabated large-scale development in upper La Guerta and Nivel Hills where erosions of loose soil and silt washed down to the creek and it was that time that I have developed the habit of sleepless nights during a rain, even how slight.

The creek will overflow during strong typhoons and ceaseless rains and brought with it silt, clay and mud from the hills which caused inconvenience in my locality. My former house used to suffer from the constant floods as it is located in the lowest part of an embankment and I would find myself waking up at dawn or in the middle of my sleep plugging holes or washing away the filth and the mud before it hardened. Often, I have company with reptiles and varmint dislodged by these floods.

After a flood the water is very clear, the banks swept clean by the current and it is that moment where life appear for just a few hours. Gobies converge on the minute springs that appeared overnight resulting from runoffs of areas inundated with rain and flood water. For just a few hours these tiny spots became the last refuge for this tiny fish after they are forced down from their abode after a heavy downpour. Then, slowly, toxic pollutants and detergents and other filth get to work its way down the current and blacken the creek snuffing all minute particles of life.

The Lahug Creek is ecologically dead! And that is a fact. My neighbors and people living upriver throw their garbage unashamedly placing a strain on the creek bed itself. I have waged a one-man campaign against this practice for many years and my pleas fell on deaf ears among my neighbors and among the barangay authorities. I have created animosity amongst friends back then because of this advocacy and they couldn't blame me for they have seen me cleaning their pathways of weed and litter every month to make life bearable for them en gratis!

Four years ago when the large garbage bin of Tejero Elementary School was closed people looked for an alternative to throw their refuse and they found a convenient place at a vacant area in the southwest corner of the school. The new garbage dumpsite is found beside the road and a bridge and is on the entrance to a creekside path that led to my place and it emitted a foul smell. Some of these waste would find itself falling into the creek and will not be retrieved unlike on the dumpsite itself were it is hauled into a passing garbage truck.

The location of the garbage has caused me severe embarrassment when someone visits me and my family. It is AN EYESORE AND IT STINKS! Technically, it is within the jurisdiction of Barangay Tejero and it is for this reason that they supplied the garbage truck to collect the accumulated wastes and, even with that, it failed to address the hygiene issue. Apparently, Mr. Jesselou Cadungog and his council have tried their best to clean the place and ran out of strong ideas to remove permanently the area of garbage.

In the meantime, another barangay that shared the creek with Tejero – Barangay Tinago (where I belonged, yes) - seemed to be happy sitting on its fence even when the majority of the schoolchildren that passed by that area (and some garbage throwers) came from their barangay. Mr. Joel Garganera never lifted a finger to help address this problem and it took another barangay captain after the elections to solve this eyesore.

The honorable Domingo Lopez, the present head of Tinago, did a hell of a job clearing away the area of garbage, reminding people never to throw anymore their wastes there and pursued the clean-up of the Lahug Creek along its boundary with Tejero with so much dedication and enthusiasm. He even installed a wire mesh under the bridge on the side of Barangay T. Padilla to screen out the floating garbage that would find its way downriver and lighted the creekside path with CFL bulbs.

He is always there to supervise his people and monitored his clean-and-green projects every now and then and he never failed to replace a busted light bulb and I am aware of that and I am so glad that I have not wasted my vote for him. He is very different from his predecessor. The creek have never been in good hands under his watch and I take my hats off for Mr. Lopez. He reminds me of my late great uncle, Enrique Alba, who used to take charge of Barangay Tinago with a big stick.

Meanwhile, I walk on the path from my house for work and I am not ashamed anymore to stand on the sidewalk waiting for a public jitney where there used to be a garbage dumpsite or be bothered by the stinking odor. The eyesore and the stink are there no more. The creek, oh, it is dead beyond repair but there are no more garbage placed inside shopping bags, tarpaulin sheets, old tires, broken furnitures and other large discarded items thrown on the creek bed. My neighbors have completely understood the message of Mr. Lopez quite well...and mine too, although a bit belated.

Document done in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer.

MURKY FUTURE FOR MACTAN CHANNEL

LAST OCTOBER 15, 2007, I WENT to Mactan Island on some official business. I went to Pier 3 to board the River Ferry launch that was to take me to that island from mainland Cebu. It was 2:30 PM when the launch proceeded to cross the Mactan Channel. The rain had just stopped minutes ago where there was heavy downpour that lasted for about an hour before that.

As the launch was now cruising on the livid blue-green waters of Cebu Harbor, I noticed swarms of marine birds, unusual in number, dived and skimmed on the water’s surface. They happened to peck and pick on the flotsam and jetsam that the floodwaters of the Lahug Creek disgorged, whose river mouth is now but a square hole underneath the asphalt-and-concrete berthing area.

As far as the eye could see, discarded pieces of plastic in huge volumes and other kinds of household debris and industrial wastes were floating and bobbing on the surface, scattered over the whole width and length and depth of the channel. It was brownish and dirty and fast approaching the dirty notoriety of murky Manila Bay.

The harbor waters wasn’t THAT dirty 30-35 years ago. I remembered in my pre-adolescent years when the city’s waterfront area was my favorite playing ground and hang-out. I learned (or was forced) to swim there after being pushed intentionally and I swam like a dog. Back then, whenever my time would warrant I would take a dip there. Sometimes, as a sport, we would dive from a departing boat and swim back to the pier and the one who left the boat when it is farthest from the shore was declared the winner!

Marine life were abundant back then. Jellyfish would parade like an army of strange aliens. Squid or cuttlefish would appear in droves when no moon appeared in the night sky and find refuge under the glare of lights of berthed ships. All kinds of fishes could be angled from its depths as well as crustaceans caught inside cagetraps from beneath.

Seashells could be had by the mere picking during low tide by swimming towards the exposed reefs, sandbars and rocky beds nearby Pilipog (Shell) island which is a half-kilometer away from the Aduana*.

Today’s condition of the sea is a far cry from that sea of long ago where I used to swim.

As the launch moved on in the middle of Mactan Channel we passed by Mandaue City. The Subangdaku River let out the same kind of debris and wastes, marked by swarms of marine birds, and they took on a pattern as if it were parading in a straight and wavy line going south. Farther north, it was the same discouraging look as the Butuanon River and other northern rivers aped the previous two.

I have done my share by watching the part of the Lahug Creek where I am living and discouraged my household and my neighbors from disposing their garbage on the waterway for it would surely wind its way to the sea. It has been my advocacy for many years now and, I know, it is not enough. It would take a whole mass of people with the same mindset as I have to reverse this trend.

People living upriver and below mine find it convenient to throw their wastes directly on the creek. My heart ached when I see whole canvass sheets, garbage wrapped inside plastic shopping bags, discarded rubber tires and islands of styropor stuck on the river bed impeding the flow of water and it will take a great downpour to erase that stigma. Which the harbor waters graciously receive into its depths that, I know, is a never-ending vicious cycle imposed by man on his environment.

After witnessing the condition of the Mactan Channel after a heavy downpour did it occur to me to involve myself more by writing this story on my blog and disseminate this information into as many people as possible thru the Internet. I would broaden my advocacy on the World Wide Web.

I surmised, that modern science and technology have made plastic and other synthetic material more harmful to man than good in an indirect manner. Especially, if they happen to be used by some people living in Metro Cebu.

Then you add the government bureaucracies that line the shores of this narrow channel who don’t give a damn about its environs and content themselves passing some toothless garbage ordinances that nobody wanted to enforce! Lack of foresight, laxity, ignorance, carelessness and a “don’t care” attitude make up for disastrous elements that may cloud the future of our children.

If I may have my way I would opt to ban plastic and other synthetic materials and those goods contained therein for it doesn’t do no good if they happen to be in the hands of those mindless zombies. For the future of our generation, I say, we BAN THOSE PLASTIC AND SYNTHETIC MATERIALS!

Document done in RoughDraft 3.0, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.

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* The old Bureau of Customs building. Now the alternative seat of the President of the Philippines and known as the Malacañang of the South.