The Denial King

FOR ALL his much bruited about unbending principles and unshakeable commitment, Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez of the City of San Fernando limply goes on-denial in matters environmental. So it appears.
At the height of the massacre of trees along MacArthur Highway, environmentalist Cecille Yumul reminded Rodriguez of a previous public pronouncement that he stood against the cutting of trees.
Rodriguez denied having said that unconditionally, rationalizing – like the astute lawyer that he is – that there was no move to cut the trees at the time he said it. Furthering that he could not stand against a “national policy” which he meant to be the widening of the MacArthur Highway necessitating the cutting of trees.
Rodriguez unblinking in saying all these, notwithstanding the signing of the so-called “Covenant for the Trees” he himself as city mayor convened right along MacArthur Highway itself, in front of the New Era University campus sometime in his second term. That is if ageing memory still serves right.
A couple of weeks back, Macabebe Mayor Annette Flores-Balgan fingered the City of San Fernando as the source of toxic wastes devastating her town’s fishing industry.
Rodriguez instantly denied it, passing the blame to Angeles City that moved Mayor Ed Pamintuan to remind his kumpare that Angeles – unlike San Fernando – had no industrial plants from where toxic wastes could have flowed out into the rivers and choked the fish in Macabebe.
Still denied later by Rodriguez is Balgan having communicated with him, in any way.
Only this Wednesday, bannered in Sun-Star Pampanga is Rodriguez denying the existence of an open dumpsite in his city. (Pamintuan made the same denial, but his is a different story). This, despite an order dated January 17, 2011 signed by Environment Management Bureau-3 Director Lormelyn Claudio recommending the “execution of closure orders” on open dumpsites in 16 areas in Pampanga including the cities of San Fernando and Angeles for gross violation of Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2001.
The order explicit in saying “…the LGUs failed to truly demonstrate their will to close the existing open and controlled dumpsites…”
Rodriguez defiant in saying, as reported in Sun-Star Pampanga: “I have already closed all open dumpsites here since I assumed office.”
Which immediately ran counter to the affirmation of the Most Rev. Pablo Virgilio S. David, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Fernando, that “dumpsites are everywhere” in the province.
Dared the bishop: “My group can give you a guided tour where the dump sites of Pampanga are. Every LGU has one.”
I pray most fervently that Among Ambo spared Rodriguez from his curse on the degraders of the environment that he once cast on those polluting Sapang Balen Creek.
By saying he has “already closed all open dumpsites” in San Fernando since he assumed office, Rodriguez could only be lying.
Much as I wanted to give Rodriguez the benefit of the doubt on the long existence and continuing operation of the city dumpsite in Barangay Lara by the eastern lateral portion of the FVR Megadike systems, I simply could not.
Rodriguez passes by that dumpsite on his way to his resthouse in Barangay Maliwalu, Bacolor. On a number of occasions I was overtaken by Rodriguez’s convoy of black Starex van and white Nissan Patrol along that same stretch of the megadike above the dumpsite.
Practically, I take the megadike daily, whether for my early morning ride on my mountain bike or in going to my second home in Xevera-Bacolor. Never was there a time that I did not come across garbage trucks from San Fernando’s barangays going in with their loads and out empty of the city dump.
Just to prove a point, yesterday I went down the dump and took photographs. These are splashed on our front page today.
Indeed, the photographs affirm: By saying he has “already closed all open dumpsites” in San Fernando since he assumed office, Rodriguez is not only denying. He is patently lying.