Useless, as usual

AS INANE as it goes.

A multi-billion company in Clark is reported to have been extracting soil, aye, levelling a hill, near the Sacobia Bridge for use as filling materials to the Midori Hotel it is constructing.

The Aeta tribes there cried “illegal quarrying!”

Apprised of the situation, one Engr. Rey Cruz of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau said his office was not aware of any permit issued for the Midori project in the area.

“Any extraction of ordinary earth or quarry materials should be covered by pertinent permits. (In Midori’s case) wala po kaming alam diyan,” said Cruz.

As there were no permit issued, so there could not be any quarrying there? Testimonies and pictures to the contrary notwithstanding.

Wow, what unreason!

Environmentalists decry the denudation of that Clark hill Donggwang is developing into a golf course. The Environmental Management Bureau allayed fears of any erosion resulting therefrom as Donggwang, it said, constructed anti-erosion barriers. At the slightest of rains, earth and water rush down that hill, silting nearby creeks, blocking roads, inundating low-lying areas.

The EMB swears by the efficacy of Donggwang’s anti-erosion barriers.

Wow, what blinded faith!

Still on the EMB. Schools, residential and commercial areas along the Porac-Angeles City boundary complain of the stench of piggeries in Barangay Sta. Cruz, which has caused respiratory ailments, skin diseases and allegedly even contributed to aborted pregnancies and birth defects.

The EMB said there is no mechanism to measure the obnoxiousness, much less the toxicity, of the stench. So it cannot be said that it affects people’s health.

Whaaat?      

Back to the MGB. There is this Xi-something mining company located within the confines of the FVR Megadike – actually less than a hundred meters from the dike’s base – in Barangay Maliwalu, Bacolor.

Residents in the area said the contraptions erected at the site – “straight from the old Mad Max movies” – are too complicated for a mere batching plant. They suspect something going over there beyond the “cleansing” of sand of pumice rocks and stones.

“May minimina po dito sa buhangin mismo (Something is being mined from the sand itself here),” they said. Noting that the Maliwalu Creek that drains to the center channel of the Gugu Creek has been diverted to run through the site.

Maybe the MGB will again say that as quarrying/mining is not permitted within a kilometre radius of bridges and other infrastructures, there just cannot be any quarrying/mining in that Xi-something site in Maliwalu.      

And then, who was that idiot of a functionary at the mother agency of the MGB and EMB, the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, that said – over local television – that old trees are a threat to the environment and must be cut, thereby providing his most irrational unjustification to the massacre of trees along the MacArthur Highway?  

As inutile as it gets.

Real, all too real, is the threat of water theme parks and golf courses to the Clark watershed. The ill effects already being felt -- directly in Sapang Bato where water rationing has been reported by no less than Angeles City Mayor Ed Pamintuan himself, and indirectly in the city proper area where residents complain of weak water pressure.

The Sapang Balen Creek – no matter the clean-up program of the Angeles City government – remains in clear and present danger of decaying from domestic and industrial wastes.

Open dumpsites – the Solid Waste Management Act decreed – should have been closed down two years back. The EMB itself listed all towns and cities in Pampanga still operate their open dumpsites.

Industrial pollution is creating much havoc on the prawn farms as well as the fishing grounds of Macabebe and Masantol towns.

Under cover of darkness, the Department of Public Works and Highways cut down scores of trees along the San Miguel-Pilar Village stretch of the MacArthur Highway, flouting both environmental laws and the terms agreed upon by all parties – DPWH and DENR included – on the issue of the trees thereat.

In all the above cases of environmental degradation, what has the DENR – as mandated guardian of the environment – done?

Nada. Zilch. Nought. Nothing. As expected. As usual. As useless.