By DWIGHT SARGA
[ Malaya.com.ph ] December 2, 2009
The Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) is asking the World Bank (WB) for an additional $10 million to further improve the environmental quality of the lake and help local government units (LGU) in its flood and waste management projects.
Dolora Nepomuceno, LLDA assistant general manager, said the additional fund to the Laguna de Bay Institutional Strengthening and Community Participation project (LISCOP) would be a WB loan to the national government. LLDA is expecting that the loan would be approved in the first quarter of 2010.
Nepomuceno said the funding is meant to support the post-disaster needs of local government units, especially for flood control and waste management.
Laguna de Bay is the country’s largest freshwater body, covering five provinces, 12 cities and 54 municipalities. Typhoon Ondoy caused floods in Laguna, Metro Manila and other parts of the national capital region.
Nepomuceno said the funding request is now also under the National Economic and Development Authority-Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) board.
Based on a project information document submitted by LLDA to WB, the project’s focus would be "on supporting the scaling up of priority environmental subprojects by the LGUs such as investment on municipal solid and liquid waste management and on responding to the rehabilitation needs of LGUs affected by the floods supports three Strategic Objectives (SO) of the CAS: SO3 on better public delivery; SO4 on reducing vulnerabilities, especially for vulnerable people living around the lake and waterways; and, SO5, on better local governance through effective decentralization."
Nepomuceno said the added funding is necessary because LGUs would not be able to "mobilize and respond to their needs" by just using their own resources.
LISCOP also aims to transforming LLDA, from a regulatory body, "to an institution capable of catalyzing and supporting LGUs and other stakeholders… to respond to the rehabilitation needs of LGUs affected by the great floods that hit the project areas."
About $3 million to $4 million of the requested $10 million fund would be used by LGUs to support rehabilitation of LISCOP subprojects and other environmental and flood control infrastructure damaged by the flooding caused by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, and improvement of flooding mechanisms of cities or provinces spared by the recent typhoons, which was under LISCOP’s scope, the LLDA request document to WB said. Places to benefit under LISCOP would be cities in Metro Manila and provinces of Rizal and Laguna.
Under LISCOP, LGUs subprojects would be: material recovery facilities to reduce the amounts of solid waste going to landfills via recovery, recycling, re-use and composting and address garbage clogging to waterways and canals that causes floods; creation of sanitary land fills (municipal/level 1) to manage residual solid waste after recycling and composting; waste water treatment facilities to "address domestic effluent in areas not covered by the concessionaires as well as wastewater from municipal abattoirs"; flood control an d slope and riverbank stabilization for local drainage protection and protection of low lying and critical areas from floods and lands; and natural resource management and environmental enhancement addressing watershed and lake water quality degradation.
The remaining $6 million to $7 million would be used in supporting the subprojects of LGUs under the Laguna de Bay Environment Action Planning, a component of the LISCOP, the public information document said.
"The number of subprojects could increase as more subprojects are expected to be proposed during the implementation of the additional financing," the document said.
The NEDA’s PMS said 27 of LISCOP’s 35 projects were already completed, and eight projects, affected by the typhoons, are only remaining.
With the added funds, LLDA is also planning "to increase the number of participating LGU from 24 to potentially encompass all 61 municipalities and cities in the Laguna Lake watershed area."
LLDA said that 19 LGUs have already shown interest in availing assistance from the LISCOP additional funding.
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