An Act Declaring the Dimapatoy Watershed in Datu Odin Sinsuat Municipality, Maguindanao Del Norte as a Protected Area in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), Defining Preservation Measures, Violations and Penalties, Providing Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes

This declares the Dimapatoy Watershed in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte, a protected area, and then sets out in detail what may not be done in it.

The prohibited acts run to 12 paragraphs. Illegal or unauthorised cutting or gathering of trees and plants of any species in the watershed and its environs. Gathering and burning dried plants and trees. Open burning of solid waste. Open dumping or burning of biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste. Transporting and dumping collected domestic, industrial or commercial waste in bulk anywhere other than a prescribed facility. Constructing or operating landfills, waste disposal facilities or groundwater reservoirs in the watershed or any part of it. Open dumping or burning in flood-prone areas within the watershed. Littering or dumping along its roads, canals, parks and establishments, or causing or permitting that. Discharging or depositing any waste pollutant into the watershed's water body, or anything that would impede its natural flow. Discharging or injecting anything into the surrounding soil that would pollute groundwater. Discharging regulated water pollutants without a valid discharge permit. And mining and quarrying activities.

Section 4 sets protective measures and Section 6 provides that omission of any watershed duty, and violations of Sections 4 and 5, carry fines and penalties.

A watershed is the catchment that supplies water downstream, and its protection is a question of what happens upstream rather than at the tap. Declaring one a protected area is the instrument for restraining activity in the catchment before the water is affected.

The list of prohibitions tells you what the actual pressures are: logging, waste dumping, landfill siting, pollutant discharge and quarrying. These are the ordinary uses a watershed near a populated municipality attracts, and the bill's answer is to name each of them.

Banning groundwater reservoirs is the clause most readers would pass over and it is the one that shows the drafting was done by someone who understood the hydrology. A reservoir in a watershed is normally thought of as water infrastructure — a good thing — but constructing one in the catchment alters the natural flow the watershed exists to deliver and can concentrate contamination. Listing it alongside landfills as a prohibited construction is a judgement about the watershed as a system rather than as a reserve of trees.

So is the prohibition on gathering and burning dried plants. Clearing dead vegetation looks like tidying; in a catchment it removes the ground cover that slows runoff and holds soil, and burning it in place is how an upland fire starts. Most protected-area statutes prohibit cutting live trees and stop there.

The weakness is in Section 6. The Act says violations of Sections 4 and 5 "shall be meted with fines and penalties" without stating what they are. A prohibition without a quantified penalty is unenforceable until implementing rules supply one, and implementing rules cannot create penal liability that the statute has not defined. Compared with the registry's other environmental measure — the proposed Lake Lanao authorities, 1 of which can set administrative fines itself — this bill prohibits more precisely and punishes less definitely.

One piece of context the bill does not supply. Datu Odin Sinsuat is the municipality whose district hospital is the subject of Bill No. 146, which has 13 co-authors, and whose barangays were split into 2 new municipalities by BAA 54 and BAA 55. It is among the most legislated-about local governments in the registry, and this is the only measure that concerns its water.