La Mesa damned

IMAGINE 1,141 households of an average six family members each plunked upon a 58-hectare spread of land right inside the La Mesa Dam watershed area. There’ll be an initial 7,000 people generating trash and an array of refuse that may not exactly leach into the dam that supplies water for Metro Manila’s teeming population.

Give a decade or two and the initial numbers shall have trebled, quadrupled. Predictably, the once-unspoiled topography goes to seed—we’ve seen that deterioration happen again and again in low-cost housing projects and homesites for middle-class families. The tons of garbage, sewage, filth and all that trash generated by the community ought to be hitting less than tenable proportions. An erstwhile watershed area ought to be groaning if it only could.

Never mind the groans. Grin and bear it.

But Metro Manila won’t take offense at the contamination of its potable water source. Masasanay din tayo sa kababuyan, sa salaula.

Metro Manilans might cheer zillions of Escherichia coli-- the bacterium type that thrives in fecal matter-- swimming in every glass of tap water they’ll love to drink. A few zillion colonies of Clostridium botulinum – a spoiled type of microorganism that despoils food and is often used to decimate populations-- ought to add zap to the water supply. Did anyone mention Bacillus anthracis? Don’t breathe a word about this to anyone, huh?

C’mon. Metro Manila should get used to the pestilence generously wrought at the dam and piped into their homes, drop by lethal drop.

Why, we could use the La Mesa Dam as an outdoor type laboratory to do colossal experiments in microbiology, maybe some two-bit epidemiology with a view to cranking out effective biochemical weapons to thin out the ranks of the unemployed, the teeming riff-raff, and the excess populace.

With a lab like that, as the Beatles once howled: “You know we should be glad… Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

We ought to allow human nature to take its curse, ehek, we mean, of course.

What the hell do we care about the environment, hah!?!

Let’s break ground pronto at the La Mesa Damned.

Let the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride out.

We could use some pestilence. Honest.