Tagbilaran City Mayor Dan N. Lim told the Chronicle that he had opted to do the "longer route" in seeking for funding of the Waste Water Treatment Facility in Taloto district.
This means that the Provincial Development Council will have to endorse it to the Regional Development Council on October 17 to be included in the current National Budget deliberations that is going on in Congress at full blast.
Much earlier, Governor Rico Aumentado had volunteered to sponsor the inclusion of the environmental facility in the National Budget together with Congressman Edgar Chatto of the First District. But the Mayor insisted then to do the bank funding route.
The mayor stressed his target date remains, however, at December 2008 to start the German-technology-based water treatment equipment erection for operation in 2009.
He said that the advanced high-technology allows the equipment to process waste and convert it into potable water.
Mayor Lim said his medium-term plan is to rechannel the gallons for converted potable water into a vast area (costing P 12-Million for the land) near the facility which will become a nature park. However,he disclosed City Hall does not yet have a perspective of the planned park.
Other municipalities wanting to utilise the water treatment facility for waste conversion will be welcomed for a fee, the city executive explained.
The other financial route would have been for the City to seek the approval of the Development Bank of the Philippines for a "jumbo credit line" in the vicinity of P 500-Million to cover the Water Treatment Facility, Waste Management Facility and the concreting of roads.
30 DAYS ULTIMATUM ON 38 VIOLATORS
The embattled City Chief Executive also said that City Hall will be in tandem with the DENR in implementing the "forced" disconnection of all illegally-tapped violators to the water drainage system near the CPG avenue after the 30-days "voluntary disconnection" leeway lapses.
The DENR chief Lito Atienza who was interviewed over "Inyong Alagad " program of the Chrocnile sister station DYRD clearly stated that the city has police powers to effect the disconnection that endangered the life and health of citizens through the flooding and the environmental danger poised against the Tagbilaran seawaters.
Mayor Lim had consistently said he cannot effect anything on the 38 illegal connections because the project was purportedly not yet turned over to the city. City Hall had always refused to acknowledge acceptance of the project unless the connections were dismantled.
Hanjin Industries of Korea, contractor of the Project, on the other hand, had refused to do the disconnection since it was not reportedly part of their scope of work.
The city mayor said that aside from the P50,000 penalty for the illegal connection, the violators will be charged the cost of the line disconnection. - The Bohol Chronicle