Category: environment

“Suspend all reclamations in Manila Bay.”

Posted by Ipat G. Luna on Facebook
15 Nov around 10 pm

Look Yolanda in the face and tell us you will still reclaim 26,000 hectares of Manila Bay. Even before she came, “In a span of only 20 years, the country has seen its sea levels increase at three times the rate of the rest of the world – one of the many reasons why the country is extremely vulnerable to climate change.”

1. Suspend all reclamations in Manila Bay.

2. Change PRA’s mandate, make it the Philippine Rehabilitation Authority.

3. Legislate a presumption against reclamation, that can only be overturned by an overriding public need.

4. Require genuine alternatives in all reclamations going through our EIA system, specifically that of developing instead the inner cities into diverse neighborhoods that accommodate the rich and poor alike in decent, climate-resilient and “green” housing.

And lastly, let’s vote with our precious pesos — LET’S NOT BUY PROPERTY in newly reclaimed land in Manila Bay. They may only be speculating and even if they’re not, think of liquefaction and storm surges.

read Why was Typhoon Yolanda so strong? Scientists chime in

pablo, logging, mining *updated*

the president has every reason to be apalled by the 1000+ deaths and still counting, 800+ still missing, and P15 billion damage to agriculture and property, not to speak of the despair and misery of the tens of thousands of homeless and hungry, in compostela valley and davao oriental, wrought by typhoon pablo.

Aquino, in a keynote speech during the change of command of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), stressed that preemptive measures should be in place whenever there are incoming typhoons to avoid lost of lives and tremendous damage to properties.

“If there is a need to double our warnings; if there is a need to triple our preparations; if we need to evacuate them one week before massive rains and flooding bring havoc to the people, we will do all of these because it is our duty to save lives to the best of our ability,” he said.

The President said he was appalled by the devastation in New Bataan, Compostela Valley, and Boston, Davao Oriental, both in southern Philippines, during his visit there last week.

senator loren legarda likewise harps on the need for preparedness.

“These would have been avoided if our local government units and all our citizens had knowledge of geohazard maps,” the senator said during the briefing called by the Senate Committee on Climate Change on the use and implementation of the geohazard maps.

She said that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources “should not only distribute these maps, but also, and more importantly, educate LGUs on how to read the map and how it will help them in their disaster risk reduction and management efforts.”

“Am I living in a landslide area? Am I living in a flood-prone area? Filipinos in every barangay in the country need to know this information long before any typhoon signals are raised. Coupled with early warning signals at least seven days before any typhoon arrives, we should be able to radically minimize the casualties,” Legarda said.

hmm.  so the solution is to evacuate threatened communities early enough, at least a week before an imminent typhoon. never mind if  that the typhoon could suddenly change course, better safe than sorry.  of course there would have to be properly provisioned evacuation centers that would have to be located on certifiably safe ground or there would be no point to the exercise.  the logistics would be major, the costs considerable, but such is life, or rather, such is the price we pay for an environment degraded eroded raped over the decades (up to the present) by government’s capitalist cronies administration after administration.

not surprisingly, there is no talk of calling for an absolute stop to all logging and mining activities that are mainly to blame for the ecological decay that bring deadly floods and killer landslides during heavy rains.

“The heartbreaking reports of deaths and destruction in New Bataan, Compostela Valley and several Davao Oriental towns and elsewhere show how Mindanao’s environment has reached its maximum limit,” Sr. Stella Matutina, OSB, Panalipdan Mindanao secretary-general, said in a statement.

The group said President Benigno Aquino III’s visit last Friday to disaster-stricken areas “should compel him to stop large-scale mining and other extractive industries that caused the tragedy.”

… She cited a report made by Panalipdan Southern Mindanao that both provinces are swamped with many large-scale mining and logging companies, with Davao Oriental accounting for 31 mining tenements, application and operations while Compostela Valley has 43.

googled and found this: MINING TENEMENTS STATISTICS REPORT AS OF JANUARY ‘2012, Region XI, obviously an incomplete list if sr. stella’s figures are correct.

last year in the wake of sendong, the president was not receptive to talk vs. logging and mining.

Asked about the need to seriously look into illegal mining and illegal logging and amending the existing laws, the President said the rights of businesses must be respected.

He said logging concessionaires have the right to harvest the trees that they planted and the government can’t easily stop their operations.

i wouldn’t be surprised if, like other presidents before him, the prez would rather leave it to the next admin to make the major changes in policies, specifically, a shift from logging and mining to the reforestation and rehabilitation of our denuded and damaged highlands and watersheds.  the prayer now probably is that ondoy, sendong, and pablo were freak disasters, and maybe the streak is over, the next typhoons will be kinder.

otherwise, the environment is an urgent agenda waiting for a president to happen. a president who would see that there is nothing sustainable about the mining and wood industries that have done, and continue to do, so much damage to our lands and waters.  surely there are alternative development strategies that are not so destructive of our island ecologies and that do not enrich a few at the expense of the many.

*

Crisis in the aftermath of ‘Pablo’
Not learning from Sendong and Pablo
How Aquino log ban was ignored 
Aquino’s Log Ban Plan Flawed, Say Environmentalists
Storms more deadly as Philippines gets hotter 
Disasters and the poor 
Mindanao lumad, green groups blame Aquino’s mining policies for devastation wreaked by typhoon Pablo
Confirmed: Deforestation Plays Critical Climate Change Role 
Mining, logging contributed to RP disaster — experts 
Disquiet 
AFTER MARCOPPER The Canadian quandary
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AS SPIRITUAL AND REVOLUTIONARY PRAXIS

philex, marcopper, waste spills

It will be total closure for listed mining firm Philex Mining Corp. if it does not pay within 45 days a P1.034 billion penalty for violations of the Mining Act of 1995 imposed by the Department Environment and Natural Resources.

that’s the good news.  the bad news is, philex spokesperson mike toledo says the company will file a motion for reconsideration.

“We will exhaust all administrative remedies provided for under the law, under the department circulars and administrative orders… We will appeal the MGB decision finding us liable for the payment of this fine,” he said.

Toledo said Philex is aiming to complete a clean up and rehabilitation of Padcal mine by the second quarter of 2013. The company hopes to restart operations by the second half of next year.

so i suppose the media spin goes on:  that it was an accident, that philex responded right away with financial help to victims, that the waste spill is not as toxic as marcopper’s in 1996 — even if this last were true (we have yet to see toxicity studies) the sheer volume of the waste spill, some 20 million metric tons, said to be 10 times that of marcopper’s, still makes it the worse disaster, if not the worst, it would seem, ever.

it was no accident.  it could have been avoided had philex built a new tailings pond instead of continuing to use an old one that was due for decommissioning by june 2012 at the latest.

read bulatlat‘s Philex’s 20 MT mine waste spill, ‘An act of God, or Greed?’

Since day 1 (last Aug 1) of the latest reported leak from the Philex tailings pond in the north, Philex has actively projected an appearance of taking responsibility.

Philex boasted that they shut down operations a day ahead of the government suspension. It also promised it will only continue mining operations at Padcal after assuring the “safety and integrity” of tailings pond 3, Padcal’s sole operational mine tailings pond at the site.

But contrary to Philex’s projection, it is not telling the public that instead of repair and remediation, it should have been decommissioning the Tailings Pond 3 as early as 2010 or at the latest, this June of 2012. The said tailings pond has reached the end of its 18 to 20 years’ lifespan this year, based on DENR data on the dam. An earlier waste spill from the same dam occurred in December 2009, and it should have been warning enough, the Katribu Partylist said in a statement.

victoria fritz, in ricardo saludo’s column space, submits that it would have cost philex much less if it had earlier built a new tailings pond instead.

Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) chief Juan Miguel Cuna said that Philex violated terms in its ECC for discharges “way beyond regulatory levels.” Cuna added that penalties for ECC violations were separate from fines for violation of the Clean Water Act, imposed by the Pollution Adjudication Board.

And if the ECC is revoked, closing the copper and gold mine would mean losing over P10 billion in revenues a year, going by the facility’s 2011 earnings of P9.29 billion from gold alone.

With those kinds of losses, it clearly would have been far cheaper to build a spare pond for P300 million, so tailings could be diverted there after two storms damaged the tailings facility on August 1. Now, on top of suffering massive losses and fines, Philex will still need to build a new pond or repair the old one, as it is considering so as to resume mining sooner.

in developed countries, here’s the drill in preventing and containing mining accidents:

For the Tailings Management Handbook of Australia’s Department of Industry Tourism and Resources, a state-of-the-art tailings storage facility is a safe, stable landform not requiring constant management after mine closure, and blending with the surrounding landscape.

That’s a tall order, since a tailings pool takes up a large area hard to hide. It must store huge volumes of water without letting any contamination to seep into the ground. And there are dust problems. Not to mention the threat of typhoons and floods in the Philippines.

For greater efficiency and economy, the facility’s processing plant must remove excess water from tailings before transport. More water and processed chemicals are recovered for reuse, to lessen the volume discharged to the storage facility. This reduces the risk of seepage to surface waters.

Many mines in Australia use thickened and paste tailings, once difficult due to the cost or lack of thickener technology. Today, expenses are down, and equipment has improved, producing high underflow densities. The thickened or paste tailings improves water and process chemical recovery at the processing plant, reduces storage volume and seepage, and creates a more stable landform.

Mining companies in developing countries like the Philippines should send staff to observe and train in the mines of select developed countries using state-of-the-art technology in minimizing mining risk.

… One cannot and should not force a false choice between prosperity from mining and environmental sustainability. With technology, enlightened management, and earnest, honest dialogue, solutions can be forged to prevent accidents and mitigate their effects. Only then can the national patrimony truly become a blessing for the Filipino people, not a resource exploited for profit to the detriment of nature and nation.

so it’s not true, as suggested by an environment advocate to rina jimenez-david, that “responsible mining” is an oxymoron,  that there cannot ever be a mining operation that is “responsible” or which safeguards the community even as owners profit from it.  responsible mining is doable but it means that both the DENR and the mining industry would have to level-up.

*

After Philex mine spill, a world of gray
Untold story of Philex’s mine waste spill
Philex spill ‘biggest mining disaster’ in PHL, surpassing Marcopper – DENR

mining & the NPA, chacha & the environment

‘Victory to the noble in heart!’
By Elmer Ordonez

A VIDEO of mining operations and the havoc wrought in the mountains of Surigao is making the rounds of social media and the Internet. It was produced by GMA network as a segment of Reporters Notebook. Unable to watch it on TV, I was glad a friend e-mailed to me the video which shows wide swaths of once forest cover now baring reddish soil as results of open-pit mining—truly destructive of the pristine environment fast vanishing from our land. In Surigao large wooded areas have been gouged with machine hoes and payloaders to harvest mineral ore which are borne by trucks to the sea wharf for loading in cargo ships.

The video came together with a Star report about the New People’s Army (NPA) raid on the mining firms’ camp where dump trucks and heavy equipment were torched, three security guards killed, and two hostages taken.

A reader wrote, “After watching the video, I realized that the rebels’ belligerence is called for and completely justified. Victory to the noble in heart!” The reader, an award-winning fictionist, is not a partisan for the rebel movement, but she must have been so outraged by the miners’ assault on our diminishing forest cover and the pollution it has caused that she could not help but express herself thus. “Victory. . .” may well be for all those fighting for clean air, clean water, environmental protection — the green “armies of the night.”

Another reader involved in anti-large scale mining advocacy in Surigao del Sur wrote that Manobos live in the area. “It is difficult and dangerous to do mass work there because local executives of towns are pro-mining; they get huge amounts and benefits from the mining companies,” she said.

Official reaction to the NPA raid is typical. The president condemned the raid and expressed concern that this would discourage foreign investments. The government’s chief negotiator in the peace talks called the NPA raiders “more of bandits than rebels.” The police chief in the same Kapihan forum cried NPA “extortion.”

On the other hand, PNoy’s adviser on environment is on video saying (prior to the raid) that the mining firms have violated the Mining Act of 1995; his DENR secretary maintains that the government pursues development not at the expense of the people.

Actually the government was remiss in enforcing the laws on mining and environment while the NPA chose to punish the erring mining firms in keeping with the policy enunciated by Luis Jalandoni, chief negotiator of the National Democratic Front in the peace talks. In a statement (October 5), Jalandoni criticized the president’s reaction to the NPA raid as thinking “only . . .of favoring foreign investments, even if extremely exploitative.” He points out that “1) the extraction of nonrenewable resources such as mineral ores for export at dirt cheap prices kills the Philippine prospects for industrialization, 2) the indigenous people are subjected to dispossession of land, mass dislocation and ruination of their lives and culture, and 3) the unbridled mining poisons the environment and damages agriculture and other forms of livelihood.”

Jalandoni reminds the government about the petition filed by the Tribal Coalition of Mindanao et al. with the Supreme Court on May 30, 2011 against the targeted mines that have already poisoned the rivers and creeks and the coastal waters of Claver, Surigao del Norte.

The petition for a writ of Kalikasan (calling for a temporary environmental protection order against the mining corporations) cites a UP study finding nickel levels in the river/water systems in the area as high as 190 mg/l while the maximum level of nickel in drinking water should only be 0.02 mg/l (according to the Department of Health and the Bureau of Food and Drugs).

For years now civil society, environmental groups and church groups like the Ecumenical Bishops Forum and the Catholic bishops have expressed alarm over the destruction of our natural resources to extract mineral deposits as in Marinduque, Negros, Benguet, Zamboanga del Norte, and Surigao. The purported financial returns for the government from the Surigao mining are shown in the video to be a pittance (P 13.7 million in taxes) compared to the P144.4 billion in profit going to the mining companies for 2010.

Now both houses of Congress are agreed in principle to change the economic provisions in the charter apparently to favor foreign investments, in keeping with the lawmakers’ neoliberal tendencies. On the other hand, the progressive party-list groups and members in the House are pushing for a People’s Mining Bill to regulate the operations of mining firms and address ecological concerns for people’s welfare.

It is time for the government to reorient its economic policies for the benefit of the people, particularly the poor and indigenous peoples, and not to endlessly feed corporate greed. It is time to take seriously environmental concerns since the country is experiencing disastrous results (like floods) of past neglect and acquiescence to foreign control.

Victory, indeed, to the noble in heart!