39 buildings with no sewer connection found in Baguio

By Aileen P. Refuerzo

BAGUIO CITY – The City Buildings and Architecture Office (CBAO) has identified 39 structures with septic tanks not connected to the city’s sewerage system within the Hillside-Sta. Escolastica area  

                City Building Official Nazita Banez said the owners will be subjected to due process which involves the conduct of investigation and issuance of notices to comply.

The move is part of the revitalized campaign on the order of Mayor Benjamin Magalong to weed out illegal septic tanks to stop sewage flows into the city’s waterways and the river tributaries and increase their pollution levels. 

Banez said their continuing inspection is at the moment focused on structures that are built over creeks as these directly drain their sewage to the waterways.

Magalong said the city will pursue the expansion of the city’s sewerage treatment system particularly the conduct a feasibility study on the expansion of the South Sanitary Camp and the proposed construction of two new plants, one to be put up at Rock Quarry barangay and the other at the Slaughterhouse Compound Magsaysay Ave.  

The Baguio Sewarage Treatment Plan is “among the city-owned facilities capable of treating domestic sewage coming from residential, commercial and institutional buildings within the Central Business District and adjoining barangays – a 32-year old facility covering 65 urban barangays operating at 24 hours daily 365 days a year with a design capacity of 8,600 cubic meters per day.”

Its upgrade is long overdue as raw wastewater continually increases coming from the city’s sewer collection lines or sewerlines due to the increasing number of sewer-connected buildings thus leading to the overloading of the plant’s design capacity, inefficiency of treatment and difficulty in complying with the effluent standards.

The city also began the campaign to require buildings to address their own waste water by putting up their own treatment facilities. 

Meanwhile, four projects are currently in the works to improve the city’s sewage treatment capability.