Afloat

"We must begin thinking like a river if we are to leave a legacy of beauty and life for future generations."

~David Brower, environmentalist

After fifteen years, the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission is finally beginning to justify its existence. We walked by this clean estero (which means estuary but has come to be used for all creeks connected to the river) in the district of San Miguel in the City of Manila. If I wasn't with a group hurrying to a particular destination, I would have liked to take a walk on that neat floating sidewalk.

The Pasig River stretches for 25 kilometers through Metro Manila, and its banks are lined with the shanties of informal settlers and factories with poor waste disposal practices. Its rehabilitation will take a long time, but this idyllic scene in the middle of the teeming city gives me hope that we might actually be able to do it.

BKK: Fit for a king

The Rama IX Bridge over the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, Thailand is named after King Bhumibol Adulyadej. He is known as Rama IX and is Thailand's longest-reigning monarch, having occupied the throne since 1946. The Chao Phraya is one of Thailand's major rivers, and in English, it is called the River of Kings. The bridge was built in 1984–1987, and was renamed during King Bhumibol's 60th birthday in 2006.

It is the first cable-stayed bridge I have ever seen, and we saw it only once, during an evening Chao Phraya River sightseeing cruise. I was completely awed.
 

Bridges around the world: Sunday Bridges

River access

A tunnel and stairs provide access from the top of the thick walls of Fort Santiago to the banks of the Pasig River. They would have been convenient for the soldiers of the Spanish colonial era. Nowadays, a locked gate keeps trespassers out of the historic fortification.

Don't blame the rains

Because of the long and wide Pasig River, which connects Manila Bay on the west and Laguna de Bay in the northeast, many cities in Metro Manila are crisscrossed by its numerous estuaries and tributaries. Unfortunately, with the fast and uncontrolled growth of this largest of the Philippines' urban centers during the sixties and seventies, the river system was completely neglected. The esteros of the cities of Manila, Makati, San Juan, Mandaluyong, Pasig, Taguig and Marikina are little more than open sewers. This particular garbage-choked estuary is in Binondo, Manila. It will take much more discipline and political will than we have shown so far to rehabilitate this very important resource. And people wonder why we always get floods during the rainy season.

Additional defense

One side of the outer wall of the Spanish colonial era Fort Santiago in Intramuros overlooks the Pasig River. Just outside the high walls is a lower wall for additional defense called a falsabraga. There are two of these overlooking the river and this one, which is at the very tip of the fort, is called the Falsabraga de Santa Barbara. I can almost imagine a guardia civil standing watch in that tiny guardhouse.

This should have been scenic

Standing on the outer walls of Fort Santiago beside the Pasig River, one can look east and see Binondo (Manila's Chinatown) across the river and the Manila Central Post Office building just beyond Jones Bridge. The 25-kilometer Pasig River connects Laguna de Bay (the largest lake in the Philippines) and Manila Bay. During the Spanish colonial era, it was a very important transport route, but because of uncontrolled population growth and industrialization after WWII, the river was neglected. Factories and scores of informal settlers on its banks dumped—and continue to dump—their waste in it, using it as their personal sewage system. Since the 1990s, the Pasig River has been considered ecologically dead. Needless to say, its pollution also affects Laguna de Bay and Manila Bay. There have been several attempts to gather support for the river's rehabilitation through the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission, but they have been intermittent and never gained much ground. With 50,000 to 100,000 potential voters settled (illegally) on its banks, and national elections coming up next year, I don't think that any attempt to rehabilitate the river will succeed any time soon.