Smelly and ever-spreading, the green blight that appears here between the months of June and August all but kills marine organisms making their home near the shore. Yet the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Region X has told the people here that it is nothing to worry about, and that the nearby Asia Brewery Inc. (ABI) plant, which residents suspect has something to do with the yearly green tide, is unlikely to blame for it.

“All we can do now is wait,” said fisher Anita Datoy, describing the state they are in. “We wait till it comes. We wait till it goes away.”

In truth, the townsfolk’s fears about the bloom and their suspicions regarding its causes may not be unfounded. According to local and foreign marine experts asked by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) to look at independent samplings of the waters here, as well as at findings of an official DENR test on samples collected at Macajalar Bay, the algal overgrowth merits serious scrutiny at the very least.

They also said the DENR’s interpretations of its own tests may have been erroneous, and that the brewery’s culpability in the apparent pollution could not be discounted. The ABI plant’s role in the matter is shown to be hardly negligible by the tests commissioned by the PCIJ, the experts added.

The cloudy algal broth known as green tide has been known to cause, among other ailments, allergies to unsuspecting bathers. It also poses a dangerous threat to coastal marine biodiversity when left unchecked.

The PCIJ decided on independent testing done by university researchers after interviews with the DENR, ABI officials, fisherfolk and activists, along with readings of available data—including the DENR findings—failed to clear up what has been causing the bloom at the Bay. This independent sampling was done in June, after a preliminary study last March. It was similar to, but not a replication of, the DENR’s official sampling done last October and November. It used the same laboratory methods as DENR’s, measuring the levels of phosphates and nitrates in the effluents from the brewery, as well as in the seawater within the bloom site.

But while the DENR sampled waters from 13 stations in western Macajalar Bay, the PCIJ tested a more localized area within and closer to the bloom site. These areas were pointed out by a DENR investigating team way back in October but were not tested for nutrients at all.

These sources include the canal that empties the fishing village’s domestic effluents into the bloom site, and Taytay Creek, a kilometer east of the bloom site, that is suspected of carrying nutrients from the town’s inland farms.

Moreover, unlike the DENR sampling, the PCIJ’s tests were unannounced. Thus, the possibility that the brewery and the fishers could have done something in order to influence the results was kept at a minimum.

The PCIJ samples were tested at the chemistry laboratories of Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro City and the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) in Iligan City. The tests measured high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphates from all sources, which are attributed to a mix of factors including the rains, the peak production at the brewery and the eastward drift of the local current.

When then DENR-10 Regional Director Victor Paragas was explaining the implications of DENR findings last January, he had taken care to note that “nitrates (levels) are even higher in the coastal waters of Opol and Alubijid (where there are no blooms) in comparison with those collected from the seawater at the vicinity of ABI.”

Paragas explained that he emphasized the nitrates levels since seawaters are nitrogen-limited, meaning the growth of plants like algae depend on the available amounts of nitrogen. In other words, if nitrogen can cause algae to bloom and there is less than enough nitrogen from the brewery to cause green tide, then the blight-inducing nutrients could have come from somewhere else.

But marine scientists sought by PCIJ for this report contested Paragas’s premise, saying the DENR official’s inordinate stress on the nitrate levels may not have been wise.

Instead, they said, the DENR should have looked much more closely into the levels of phosphates. Contrary to Paragas’s assertion, they said that green algae, unlike the oceanic microscopic phytoplankton that cause red tide, are not nitrogen-limited.

Ulva and Enteromorpha, the species of algae plaguing the Macajalar Bay, are both phosphates-limited, said Prof. Eduardo Ortega of the MSU-IIT’s Department of Biological Sciences. Other recent research elsewhere in the world affirm this, including a 1998 study in Stege Bay, Denmark on different Ulva varieties; and, another four-year study, from 1992-96, in some bays in the Baltic, Mediterranean and the Atlantic coasts.

Dr. Brian Lapointe, a U.S. specialist on algal blooms’ impact on coral reefs and seagrass beds, has also established in several research work in the Caribbean islands that green algae close to coral reefs are phosphorus-limited.

Both the DENR and PCIJ samplings showed unusually high levels of phosphates relative to nitrates. Both tests also showed the ABI effluents with significant amounts of phosphates. Specifically, they revealed that the samples from the outfall and its near waters east of the outfall registered spiked levels of phosphates than the others. But the DENR sampling of the ABI lagoon and drainage canal revealed the highest levels of phosphates. Unfortunately, the ABI refused to allow PCIJ to take samples of its effluents at the lagoon and drainage canal so no comparison could be made.

Interestingly enough, Paragas had said last January that there were “trace levels” of phosphates at the brewery lagoon and drainage canal. Other experts looking at the same DENR findings, however, said that at the lagoon, there was 500 times more than the maximum levels of phosphates allowed to keep the minimum biodiversity of an ecosystem like that in Macajalar Bay. At the drainage canal, the figure was 100 times more than the maximum.

“Therefore, the (ABI) brewery lagoon wastes, which has more phosphates than nitrogen, is undoubtedly, a significant source of the limiting nutrient, phosphorus, to algae in adjacent coastal waters,” said Lapointe, president of the Harborview Research Institute in Florida.

Dr. Ephraim Metillo, an MSU-IIT marine ecologist who is also looking into nutrients levels in Iligan Bay, added that the rocky intertidal shore into which the brewery discharges its effluents is still phosphorus-limited since “it is much closer to land, it is still like that of a (freshwater) lake. Most often, only the seaward portion of coastal waters is nitrogen-limited.”

ABI Plant Manager Ricardo Co admitted that a brewery like the one he runs has a high level of nutrients in its waste stream. He attributed this to “the nature of the by-products of organic materials from the yeast and the wort or raw beer.” He did not elaborate. But malt, an ingredient in making beer, is made from barley, a grain that requires large amounts of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers in order to grow well.

ABI officials said, however, that the company makes sure nutrients are removed before any wastewater is discharged. And no one contests the ABI’s claim that its wastewater treatment facilities are far better than those of most companies doing similar processes.

But while the ABI denies using any industrial detergents in washing its bottles, it actually uses, aside from caustic soda or sodium hydroxide, an emulsifying and wetting agent that is phosphates-based. Workers at the plant say the agent, which comes in 25-kg bags, has the brand name “Ram Force.”

Widely used in the beverage industry, Ram Force is said to be highly effective in removing calcified salts on the mouths of glass bottles. It also provides the “sparkle” to bottles, thus countering the corrosive nature of caustic soda.

But this industrial cleaning and washing agent has proved to be a water pollutant. Yet its use is not illegal in this country since there is no law banning or limiting the use of phosphates, said Florencio Dominguez, DENR-10’s environmental quality monitoring officer. Only hard alkyl benzene is banned by an executive order issued by former President Corazon Aquino.

Dominguez pointed out the loopholes of the DENR Administrative Order (DAOs) 34 and 35, series of 1990. DAO 34 is on water quality standards while DAO 35 is on effluents standards. Neither of these DAOs has parameters for nitrates and phosphates for coastal and marine waters, only for freshwater bodies.

To be sure, though, the ABI plant here may not be the only one to blame for the bloom. As a renowned chemistry professor at a Cagayan de Oro-based university argued, Macajalar Bay is such a big body of water and a single plant could not have done so much damage to it.

“Besides,” said the professor who was part of the team that prepared the ABI environmental impact assessment, “there is no database yet on the Bay’s previous water chemistry with which to compare the levels of phosphorus before ABI began operations. So, how can you be really sure that the levels had increased because of ABI?”

But in 1992, a year before ABI began operations, Louis Berger International Inc., an environmental consultancy firm, tested water quality—including the presence of nitrates and phosphates—in several sites on Macajalar Bay.

Ortega also acknowledged that ABI’s nutrients alone could not be entirely responsible for the bloom. He said other things, like topography, weather, the surge of nitrates from agricultural run-offs, the calm seas, all combine to cause the bursts of algal blooms through the years. “We have to think in terms of a complex system of which the ABI nutrients is only a part,” he stressed.

But like Lapointe, Ortega said the ABI cannot be exonerated completely. As it is, the bloom flourishes within half a kilometer east of the site where the plant spews out its effluents and from the shore to 200 to 300 meters toward the open sea.

Meanwhile, other experts pointed out other ingredients that could be helping the contested portion of Macajalar Bay be hospitable to an algal bloom, aside from the phosphates-rich ABI effluents.

These include a jetty of rocks built by the fishers parallel to the ABI pipeline that reduces the beach’s capacity to flush out materials, ABI’s peak production schedule between May and July, and sedimentation caused by a short pipeline close to the shore.

The jetty, which is parallel to the brewery’s outfall, has created a dike of sorts and has altered the area’s water dynamics, particularly the ability of the water to dilute and carry the effluents into deeper waters. Built as a lookout point to watch over poachers on municipal waters, it has made the shallow sea behave much like a throat that can no longer gurgle so that litter and drift as well as effluents are trapped once they get inside.

The seasonal rains also bring nitrates from agricultural run-offs through the nearby Taytay Creek and encourage coral reefs to emit nitrogen. And while activists may not like to admit it, the septic tanks built by the fishers near or by the beach cannot also be dismissed as possible factors causing the green tide. According to the Florida-based Reef Relief, though, septic tanks leach out their contents—human wastes—underground and these streams find their way into the sea. A human being excretes at least four grams of phosphates each day.

Neither the DENR nor the PCIJ sampling, however, could determine whether or not the septic tanks here have indeed contributed to the pollution. Said Ortega: “To determine how much is the contribution of each factor to the pollution may require the longer and more extensive study.” He suggested that the study be done for at least a year.

Still, he noted that the algal bloom has always been confined within a certain small portion of the Bay’s coastline. “This,” he said, “makes it easier to point out the sources and factors affecting the bloom.”

Some environmentalist and scientists said a way to control algal blooms is to reduce the nutrients right at the source through better wastewater treatment. Others pushed for environmentally “clean” products and “cleaner” processes. Dr. Horst Mierheim of the German Federal Environmental Agency in Berlin, said, “We are also into recycling of wastewater rather than its disposal into water bodies.”

Ortega also suggested having a more serious monitoring scheme on industrial effluents and on water quality. “Most often these inspections are conducted only once a year, and only on certain standards and for the purpose of renewing the permit to operate of companies,” he said. “There must be evolved a way to monitor an industrial plant ‘s full production cycle and on a wider spectrum of standards.”

He echoed others in urging that something be done now about the green tide here. “When the birds are gone, we know because we will miss their singing,” commented Ortega, alluding to Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking 1962 book Silent Spring, which tackled the mass deaths of birds due to pesticide poisoning. “But in the case of an ecosystem like the shallows of Alo, we will not know what’s lost.”

“It will be left to us to imagine the loss of those aerobic (oxygen-dependent) creatures that used to thrive in the seagrass beds,” he said. “All of which we have not seen nor heard at all just because they don’t sing nor fly and we didn’t see nor hear them at all before they were gone.”