The Philippines Governement’s Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has just release the latest update on their Manila Bay dredging scheme, saying that the total volume of removed muck and silt from 20m distance from shore to bay and thickness/depth of two meters is 18,000m³ at the moment.
“Two units of multi-purpose amphibious dredge Watermaster Classic V will contribute to the Department of Public Works and Highways’ effort of completing by July 2019 the removal of debris, plastics, other solid wastes and dissolved solids or the so-called muck with some traces of sand from the 1.5-kilometer area of Manila Bay along Roxas Boulevard,” the department said in its latest release.
DPWH Undersecretary for Technical Services and Unified Project Management Office (UPMO) Operations, Emil K. Sadain, said that the deployment of two units of Watermaster Classic V, with cutter suction that offers combination of mobility and heavy duty dredging capacity, will further fast-track the Manila Bay dredging works located between the U.S. Embassy and Manila Yacht Club.
“ Improvements as a result of DPWH activities can now be seen but we will not relax and instead we beefed up our operating fleets of two crawler mounted land based, four amphibious excavators, debris segregators, and among others ”, said Sadain during an inspection of the project, joined with Bureau of Equipment (BOE) Director, Noel Ilao, and Assistant Director, Amador Andrada, and Project Director, Patrick B. Gatan, of UPMO-Flood Control Management Cluster.
DPWH Secretary, Mark A. Villar, officially launched the DPWH de-silting operations in Manila Bay last month by deploying a fleet of equipment composed of amphibious excavators, dumping scows, dump trucks, debris segregator, street sweepers and vacuum sewer jet cleaners.
The operations at Manila Bay Area were divided by DPWH into five sectors, each ranging from 200 to 300 meter long zones, until the entire 1.5 km area is finished.