By Manuel Valdehuesa
Street Talk
PHILIPPINES. Sun.Star, Oct. 13, 2006.
Objective: to build within an 18-hectare compound a chemical processing complex with cassava as raw material. But let's be clear about one thing: let's NOT quarrel with bio-ethanol production per se. It's a pioneering, even visionary, project - for it will certainly help the economy. Blended with petroleum, bio-ethanol is an alternative fuel for vehicles. It will help reduce the country's oil dependency. Nor should we quarrel with planting cassava or establishing plantations for it. It will ensure continuing supply of the tuber while boosting livelihood for farmers. Agriculture poses no harm to the environment...Compared with PhilAgro's, the Alsons plant will be a hundred times larger -- producing not starch but ethanol (ethyl alcohol) -- 100,000 liters of it every day. The project document states that to attain this volume, 36 hectares of cassava will be harvested daily and hauled by 100 trucks operating round-the-clock across Misamis Oriental and Bukidnon. This will already complicate our already chaotic highway and city traffic. Presumably, the ethanol produced will be delivered in tankers to the docks for shipping, posing another set of risks.
ALREADY much abused, neglected and degraded, the city's environment faces a new hazard in -- of all places! -- the heart of its watershed system. It is threatened by what may appear to be a harmless ordinance but which is fraught with dire consequences. And it was enacted by the City Council during its first session of the year -- while no one was watching!
Ordinance 10885-2008 reclassified lands straddling the upland barangays of Bayanga and Mambuaya from agricultural to agri-industrial. The Council passed it to enable Alsons Consolidated Resources Inc. -- the giant industrial firm famed for its cement-making operations in Iligan -- to construct a toxic, polluting bio-ethanol processing plant on top of Cagayan River right beside the whitewater rafting route which boosts the city's economy and gives it star-billing in Asia's tourism world.
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If this misguided ordinance is not repealed, it will invite more industrial activity in that fragile part of the watershed and raise the specter of contamination to the subsoil and underground water table that sustains the city's ecosystem -- leading to the demise of Cagayan River itself, then good bye to whitewater rafting and ecotourism.
This is reckless endangerment, to say the least. That zone has a porous sub surface laced with streams feeding into Cagayan and Iponan Rivers, plus a network of caves surrounded by vegetation where some endangered flora and fauna still thrive. It is the zone beside the city's only significant stretch of forest -- which sustains the aquifer beneath and the rivers and their tributaries.
Just weeks ago, the Kagay-an Watershed Alliance (Kawal), an environmental conservation group, learned of the ordinance's enactment last January 7 - to the dismay of its members. Kawal reports that it was passed (1) without consultations or public hearings; (2) without benefit of expert opinion on the proposed project; (3) without bothering to peruse its feasibility study; and (4) without checking with the city planning, environment, or health offices.
Minutes of that session reveal that the ordinance was enacted on the basis of a letter addressed to the Vice Mayor, who referred it to the committee on agriculture and environment for action, which then sponsored it, and the plenary passed it without the regulation second or third reading. The Vice Mayor didn't even bother presiding.
Prompted by the ordinance, Alsons purchased an initial 24 hectares from landowners in the two barangays at an undisclosed amount. And only then did it arrange for a meeting to present the project to the locals -- not before as required for an ECC (environmental compliance certificate) by the DENR.
It is not clear whether Alsons has already obtained the ECC, but there is activity in the zone now - indicating that it is starting to mobilize. Objective: to build within an 18-hectare compound a chemical processing complex with cassava as raw material.
But let's be clear about one thing: let's NOT quarrel with bio-ethanol production per se. It's a pioneering, even visionary, project - for it will certainly help the economy. Blended with petroleum, bio-ethanol is an alternative fuel for vehicles. It will help reduce the country's oil dependency. Nor should we quarrel with planting cassava or establishing plantations for it. It will ensure continuing supply of the tuber while boosting livelihood for farmers. Agriculture poses no harm to the environment.
But we must quarrel - and quarrel BIG! - with locating the raw cassava's processing plant at that particular location. Locating it there and not elsewhere is irresponsible. It's like allowing a septic tank to be constructed beside someone's artesian well. An industrial processing plant belongs in an industrial zone -- like Phividec in Tagoloan-Villanueva - not in the heart of a watershed system amidst an agricultural-cum-eco-tourism zone.
Experts testify that cassava contains hydro-cyanic acid -- a highly toxic chemical (cyanide!) with lethal effects if handled improperly. Even at home, one had better know the safe way to handle or cook cassava, or it will become poison. Awful reports of poisoning due to careless preparation have taught us this devastating lesson.
Cyanide is lethal -- think of assassins in spy movies using it for instant effect! It is volatile - meaning, its particulates become airborne and blow away in all directions, polluting and stinking up the environment. For an idea of its minor effect, think of the simple operation of the PhilAgro-Industrial Corporation in nearby Baungon which produces a few hundred bags of cassava starch by grinding -- no fermentation, no distillation, no chemical processing. One can smell its putrid odor down on the white-water rapids and up as far as the airport. Rafting operators and customers have been complaining about this.
Compared with PhilAgro's, the Alsons plant will be a hundred times larger -- producing not starch but ethanol (ethyl alcohol) -- 100,000 liters of it every day. The project document states that to attain this volume, 36 hectares of cassava will be harvested daily and hauled by 100 trucks operating round-the-clock across Misamis Oriental and Bukidnon. This will already complicate our already chaotic highway and city traffic. Presumably, the ethanol produced will be delivered in tankers to the docks for shipping, posing another set of risks.
Any accident or spill will pour effluents on the soil, poisoning it and the underground water table. Carelessness or error in the plant -- fermenting, distilling, storing or transporting it, will be devastating. There's no such thing as an acceptable risk when it comes to toxic environmental damage. And no one can guarantee that none will happen.
But no one bothered to ask or call for comments on the project. Had the councilors bothered, they would have learned that (a) the processing plant will draw tons of clean water from Monigue Spring, the area's main source of potable water -- depleting it; (b) the used/dirty water will then be disgorged lower down the same spring, emptying into Cagayan River, and endanger the downstream, downtown barangays.
Meantime, it is uncertain what the two barangays and the city will derive in added value or earn in social or economic terms -- the plant requires less than 200 workers only, mostly technical. But Alsons will earn billions. And it's a good bet that in case of accident or destruction to the environment, the people will have to shoulder the cost of mitigation, rehabilitation or rescue.
This episode shows how cavalier the City Council can be towards environment and public health hazards (consider our sewers or the lack of it!), how subservient it is to its AWOL presiding officer, how casually it manipulates legislative procedures, and how contemptuously it views the public to the point of betraying its trust. Why would they do this and for how much?
Ask incumbent councilors Caesar Ian Acenas or Alden Bacal, ex-councilor Constantino Cabacungan, aspiring Councilor James Judith, and, yes, their truant presiding officer!
A former UN executive and director at the development academy of the Philippines, Manny heads the Gising Barangay Movement and writes Mondays, Wednesday, Fridays. valdeman_esq@yahoo.com
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