Errant house and building owners here and in Benguet who use the Balili River as a convenient septic tank may yet find their sewage flowing back and belching up their sinks and toilet bowls.

This scenario looms after mayor Mauricio Domogan announced that unless voluntarily removed, illegal pipes flowing into canals and waterways would be plugged to put more teeth to the renewed campaign to "Save the Balili River".

"Let us seal with concrete these pipes draining into the river," the mayor told a recent meeting of the "Alay Sa Kalinisan", a multi-sector volunteer group at the forefront of the city's environmental concerns.

Domogan announced the effluent backflow plan after members of an environmental coalition updated members of "Alay" on fresh efforts to restore back to life the polluted tributaries of and the Balili River itself flowing from Baguio to Benguet and spilling into La Union.

The mayor said the plugging of pipes would spare the city the task of tracing the sources of illegally piped-out effluents and force polluters to stop dumping their waste into the river.

Aside from human and kitchen sewage, pollutants being dumped the river include trash, waste from backyard piggeries and used oil from vehicle repair shops. Septic tank effluents and soil from lot excavations are also directed to canals flowing into the river during heavy rains.

Even the city's rainwater drainage system is being polluted by sewage, the mayor said. He recalled seeing sewer lines of commercial buildings connected to the city's sub-surface water drainage system from Burnham Park to Magsaysay Avenue when the culverts were dug up and replaced with bigger ones several years ago.

Representatives of the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB), which regularly monitors water quality along the Balili, reported tell-tale signs of pollution: low dissolved oxygen, which is the amount of oxygen needed by aquatic life to survive, high biochemical oxygen demand, or the amount of oxygen consumed during decomposition of organic waste; and high content of coliform, a bacterium that thrives on feces.

The mayor also urged inclusion of the Bued and Galiano, two other rivers emanating from the city, in the program of the Balili River System Revitalization Coalition (BRSRC) organized last year, mainly through the efforts of colleges and universities in Baguio and Benguet.

He likewise suggested expanding the reach of the river coalition's Learning Resource Center by providing the city library with ready reference materials on the campaign for use of students.

The establishment of the BRS coalition boosted the pioneering efforts of Dr. Julie Cabato-Cabato, a physician and environmentalist who spent years rallying barangays along the waterways to maintain cleanliness of their portions of the river.

Like others who grew up here, Cabato rues the disappearance of aquatic life along the upper tributaries and headwaters of the Balili such as "bunog" (goby fish), river crab, "bakbak" (bullfrog), "jojo" (loach) and "igat" (freshwater eel).–