SMC president Ramon S. Ang said the company will aim to steadily increase the daily extraction output from the two rivers. This is in anticipation of potential monsoon rains that usually cause heavy floods in Metro Manila cities near the 27-kilometer Pasig River, and the cities of Navotas, Malabon, Valenzuela, and Caloocan alongside the 27-kilometer Tullahan River.

Both rivers empty out to the Manila Bay and were included in the list of the world’s Top 10 rivers that pollute the oceans with plastic waste. They also suffer from heavy siltation limiting their capacity to receive floodwaters.

With the Pasig river’s waste and silt extraction output at 90,000 metric tons as of November 5, SMC expects to hit the 100,000-metric ton mark by the middle of November, as daily output has been increased from 1,400 to 1,700 metric tons per day.

The Pasig River rehabilitation initiative, a P2 billion project in cooperation with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), aims to extract at least 600,000 metric tons of silt and solid waste per year, in order to clean up the waterway, help improve water quality, and reduce flooding in several cities in Metro Manila.

Apart from current pilot areas in Pandacan and Malacañang, SMC is also looking to prioritize cleaning up other shallow portions of Pasig River, namely the C5 area near the Marikina River junction, at the mouth of Manila Bay, and in the Makati-Estrella area.

For the P1-billion Tullahan River project, also fully-funded by SMC and done in cooperation with the DENR, daily output is now at an average of 2,500 metric tons. Meanwhile, total output since June 2020, when the project went full steam after the first implementation of enhanced community quarantine, has already reached 522,498 metric tons, as of November 5.

By December, SMC said the goal is to further increase the extraction capacity for the Tullahan River, as soon as a set of brand-new equipment that it acquired, arrives.

Before the year ends, SMC aims to extract a total of over 1 million metric tons of waste from the Tullahan, and expects to hit the 600,000 tons for Sectors One to Five of the project, also before the year ends.

The five sectors span the rivers’s length from the mouth of Manila Bay in Navotas City, up to Potrero in Malabon and Valenzuela City. Dredging is currently focused on parts of the river in Potrero, Malabon and Marulas, Valenzuela, and areas near Catmon and Maysilo in Malabon.

For its New Manila International Airport (NMIA) project in the town of Bulakan, SMC is also initiating a river channel enhancement program for the tributaries belonging to the Marilao-Meycauayan-Obando River System (MMORS) in Bulacan province.