The Supreme Court has reconstituted the Manila Bay Advisory Committee, which is tasked to monitor the implementation of its 2008 decision that directed concerned government agencies, including those in law enforcement, to speed up the cleanup, restoration, and preservation of Manila Bay.
Chief Justice Diosdado M. Peralta, who serves as the chairperson of the MBAC, said the new members are SC Associate Justice Edgardo L. Delos Santos, Court Administrator Jose Midas P. Marquez, and SC Associate Justice Rodil V. Zalameda as vice chairperson and working chairperson.
The chief magistrate made the announcement of the new members of the MBAC during the 2nd Manila Bay Task Force Principal’s Meeting and Conference at the Diamond Hotel in Manila.
“MBAC’s main function is to maintain the mandate of the continuing mandamus and to enable the Court to verify the reports of the government agencies tasked to clean up the Manila Bay,” Peralta said.
“The idea is not just to comply with this tall order, but to ensure that we are on track by way of periodic updates on our progress. Concededly, this could take years, but this duty is ours in the present, and we will not relent,” he added.
In 2008, the SC issued a writ of continuing mandamus enjoining several government agencies to undertake a speedy cleanup, restoration, and preservation of Manila Bay.
The writ of a continuing mandamus is a Court order that compels the agencies of the government to perform acts which the laws specifically require them to do or to comply as duties emanating from the nature and mandate of their offices.
Directed to undertake immediate action on the Manila Bay problem are the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Department of Education (DepEd), Department of Health (DoH), Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Department of Budget and Management ((DBM), the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), the Philippine National Police Maritime Group, Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), and the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA).
Under the SC ruling, these government agencies are required to submit quarterly progressive report of the activities undertaken in accordance with the decision.
Earlier, the SC had created a committee, then chaired by the now retired Associate Justice Presbitero J. Velasco Jr. – who wrote the landmark decision — with Court Administrator Marquez as vice chair, to monitor the implementation of the Court decision
Legal observers said that it is only now that the government, under President Duterte, started decisive efforts to comply with the SC’s landmark decision.
President Duterte has approved a seven-year plan to cleanup Manila Bay. The efforts would cost the government about P47 billion.
“In the light of the ongoing environmental degradation, the court wishes to emphasize the extreme necessity for all concerned executive departments and agencies to immediately act and discharge their respective official duties and obligations,” stated a pertinent portion of the SC decision in 2008.
Stressing that “time is of the essence,” the SC said: “Hence, there is a need to set timetables for the performance and completion of the tasks, some of them as defined for them by law and the nature of their respective offices and mandates.”
The campaign against the degradation of Manila Bay started on Jan. 29, 1999 when Concerned Residents of Manila Bay filed a complaint before the regional trial court (RTC) in Imus, Cavite against several government agencies for the cleanup, rehabilitation, and protection of the Manila Bay.
The residents complained that “the water quality of the Manila Bay had fallen way below the allowable standards set by law, specifically Presidential Decree No. 1152 or the Philippine Environment Code.”
Section 17 of PD 1152 states that “where the quality of water has deteriorated to a degree where its state will adversely affect its best usage, the government agencies concerned shall take such measures as may be necessary to upgrade the quality of such water to meet the prescribed water quality standards.”
On the other hand, Section 20 of the decree, states that “… it shall be the responsibility of the polluter to contain, remove and clean up water pollution incidents at his own expense. In case of his failure to do so, the government agencies concerned shall undertake containment, removal and clean-up operations and expenses incurred in said operations shall be charged against the persons and/or entities responsible for the pollution.”
On Sept. 13, 2002, the trial court ruled in favor of the residents and directed several government agencies “to clean up and rehabilitate Manila Bay and restore its waters… to make it fit for swimming, skin-diving and other forms of contact recreation.”
The agencies, with DENR as the lead, were directed within six months from the date of the decision “to act and perform their respective duties by devising a consolidated, coordinated and concerted scheme of action for the rehabilitation and restoration of the bay.”
In 2005, the Court of Appeals (CA) upheld the trial court’s decision. The CA ruled: “The decision rendered by the trial court does not require defendants-appellants to do task outside their usual functions. They are merely directed to come up with consolidated and coordinated efforts, each performing its basic functions, in rehabilitating and cleaning-up the waters of Manila Bay.”
Led by the MMDA, the agencies appealed the Court of Appeals decision before the SC.
In 1993, the Supreme Court, in a decision penned by retired Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., granted the class suit filed by 44 children, through their parents, to stop the deforestation in the country for their generation as well as those generations yet unborn.
The children wanted the DENR to cancel all timber licenses agreement and the desist from issuing new ones as they invoked their right to a balanced and healthful ecology.
In granting the right of the children to sue, the SC ruled that “children had the legal standing to file the case based on the concept of ‘intergenerational responsibility,’ as their right to a healthy environment carried with it an obligation to preserve that environment for the succeeding generations.”
The SC’s ruling on the case of the children became a global landmark decision that has been invoked in several countries.
In the Manila Bay case, the SC ordered full coordination among several government agencies to restore the bay as “a place with a proud historic past, once brimming with marine life and, for so many decades in the in the past, a spot for different contact recreation activities.”
“The importance of the Manila Bay as a sea resource, playground, and as a historical landmark cannot be over-emphasized. It is not yet too late in the day to restore the Manila Bay to its former splendor and bring back the plants and sea life that once thrived in its blue waters,” the SC said.
“The tasks ahead, daunting as they may be, could only be accomplished if those mandated, with the help and cooperation of all civic-minded individuals, would put their minds to these tasks and take responsibility. This means that the State, through petitioners, has to take the lead in the preservation and protection of the Manila Bay,” it said.