By Jina Moore
USA. Christian Science Monitor - Boston, MA, 22 Oct 2008
http://features.csmonitor.com/backstory/2008/10/20/for-fufu-in-freetown-this-african-d
The ground nut and cassava leaf stews so common in this part of the world are full of an ingredient that make weight watchers wary: oil. Palm oil is the foundation of many stews here; the oil is tapped in the countryside and brought to town, sold in plastic water bottles, a liter or two at a time. A rich orange in the bottle, the oil turns deep brown when it mixes with cassava leaves, making a stew that looks held together by chocolate syrup. In ground nut stew, a dish colored by the thin purple skins, the oil turns almost pink.
Freetown, Sierra Leone
You might not recognize Sadia Pratt in the early morning. She wears a long house dress and an apron, orange in places where palm oil has soaked in. Her hair is wrapped in a pastel cloth, and her glasses fog up when she stands over the stove just outside her front door. On a Monday morning, she’s stirring ground nut stew in a dimpled metal pot over the hat. A chicken weaves in and out of her legs as she cooks.
Later in the afternoon, she’ll be prim again, in fresh pressed clothes and small gold earrings. She’ll leave the grueling kitchen heat and preside over her cozy wood-paneled restaurant, laughing as often as she speaks, her round, young face betraying only mirth. Everyone will greet her with what has become, by now, her real name: Mama.
In a city where entrepreneurial spirit is the only abundant resource, Mama’s restaurant has a small following, and an even smaller menu. Mama runs Kieman’s, a small lunch-and-dinner spot off the beaten track here. In the wood-paneled dining room, before a bar with empty shelves, the stews she serves are more than meals; they’re a little piece of history in a country whose capital pulses with the energy of recovery.
Mama opened Kieman’s in 2000, the year Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war techically ended, but few knew whether the peace would last. The restaurant is named after her sons – Aki and Emmanuel – and in the eight years since it opened, Kieman’s has become a favorite of the intrepid tourist. You won’t find it in the growing tourist literature for travelers here, but Mama has a loyal following abroad. Britons, Americans, and Germans who’ve happened upon her Fort Street spot sing its praises on Internet message boards and chat rooms.
“If you tell her in advance that you’re coming … she truly prepares a FEAST for a bargain price,” one Australian tourist wrote. When told about the Australian, Mama said, “Ah, she’s always sending me people.”
In a post-conflict city full of aid workers and other expats, escaping mediocre “continental cuisine” and finding gems of local dining can be a challenge. The free advertising means Mama’s place is one of the few local eateries foreigners know when they hit Freetown, a destination for native dishes like cassava leaf or ground nut stews. They’re also among Mama’s favorites. “I love tasty foods,” she says. “Can’t you see I’m fat?”
Tasty Sierra Leonean foods give no pause for caloric considerations. The ground nut and cassava leaf stews so common in this part of the world are full of an ingredient that make weight watchers wary: oil. Palm oil is the foundation of many stews here; the oil is tapped in the countryside and brought to town, sold in plastic water bottles, a liter or two at a time. A rich orange in the bottle, the oil turns deep brown when it mixes with cassava leaves, making a stew that looks held together by chocolate syrup. In ground nut stew, a dish colored by the thin purple skins, the oil turns almost pink.
It may be the hints of cinnamon, or a special spice her German friends send – even Mama doesn’t know what it is – but her ground nut stew tastes like more than a thick peanut soup. It’s her mother’s recipe, Mama says. “But I improved on it.”
Food here is, of course, about more than improvisation. To explain its diversity, Americans are fond of using the metaphor of the melting pot. In Sierra Leone, where 16 ethnic groups with different languages and traditions share a country the size of South Carolina, the melting pot is literal. In fact, in West Africa, the cassava leaf and other staples cross not just provincial but national boundaries.
“These are native foods that were brought here when slaves came through,” says Hindolo Trye, Sierra Leone’s minister of culture and tourism. “Freetown was for freed slaves, and when they came here, each one from [a] different place … they started making what they’ve known before.”
Cassava is a case in point; it is the dietary staple of 250 million Africans. A root with a mild taste, it can be fried like a potato, or ground into a sticky pudding eaten with the fingers, called fufu. The leaves are chopped and turned into a stew.
Food is as much about ritual as it is about history, of course, and in Sierra Leone, cuisine has a place in ceremony. Beans are served at weddings or naming ceremonies, but not on the daily dinner table. Forty days after the death of a loved one, a celebration is held, marked with olele, a bean dish, Mr. Trye says is otherwise hard to find these days.
And then there is the ritual of routine.
“We have a culture of eating certain foods on certain days. On Saturday, the main diet is fufu,” says Tileima Yilla, principal of the Women’s Vocational and Training Center in Freetown. Like most food here, fufu is a dish prepared by the matriarch of a home. “Those who are single … they will have to go to a restaurant.”
That gives Mama’s place an important social role – and customer base. She prepares two dishes a day, usually stews. Though many Freetownians these days work in offices, they retain a preference for heavy, saucy meals made in the provinces most of them have come from, where men working outdoors needed a hefty meal to get them through the day. On a Monday afternoon a few months ago, the only locals in the restaurant were men. They wish there were more meat in the stew, they say, but otherwise, the day’s menu tastes pretty much the way food should. “Like it used to,” one man says.
It’s easy to forget, in a place like this, that there were ever good old days. In the brutal, decade-long civil war women were raped, boys kidnapped into rebel groups, who punished resisters by chopping off their arms.
But there was a before, even for Sierra Leone. In the old days, when Mama was a girl, there was electricity and water, two commodities that often disappear even before government rationing shuts them off. There were jobs, and with them, the disposable wealth of a middle class. There were department stores with fashionable clothes, and small drug stores filled with comic books that doubled as spelling primers. “Now, if you ask the kids, ‘Spell me ‘Wow!’, they wouldn’t know how,” Mama sighs.
And there were toys, not the improvisations that fill poor villages across Africa today – tiny wooden or wire replicas of bicycles, or the simpler hoop and wheel – but the toys of a prosperous British colony. Mama’s brothers had toy cars; she and her sister had dolls – white dolls. “We didn’t like the way they were making the black dolls,” she remembers. “Always with the big cheeks, red eyes. Sometimes we are afraid of them. We don’t look like this.”
There was choice. Mama studied to be a secretary, but the pay was less than she thought she could earn making traditional cuisine. So she saved, gave up her office job, and built a compound on Fort Street, with a restaurant in front and a home in back. In those days, Fort Street was busy, and she had hopes of attracting clients from the nearby Paradise Hotel.
Then the war came and food shortages: Most of the cassava, potatoes, and ground nuts that made up Mama’s menu were grown in the provinces. When the violence reached the city, Fort Street became a dangerous place. Mama and her family fled, and her little compound was spared from rebel-set blazes by the iron bars and windows.
Peace has brought a flood of international organizations to Freetown, and now secretaries make far more than they imagined they ever could when Mama gave the profession up. But the people they work for don’t usually dine in restaurants like Mama’s. Mostly, her clientele is a loyal, but small, group of locals who love her food.
She gives little thought either to what might have been, if she’d kept her office job, or to what might still be, if she’s able to retire. The past and the future are full of different difficulties, she says, and “life must go on. Who will give you what you need?” She sighs. “So you have to do something.”
Oct 21, 2008
FIIRO’s breakthroughs raise hope for more food
By Segun Olugbile
NIGERIA. The Punch - Lagos, 21 Oct 2008
Olatunji disclosed that the institute had done a lot of work on the upgrading of the status of cassava such that many products including noodles, chips, soy-bean, industrial starch, and bread have been derived from the food crop. FIIRO, he said, had also developed groundnut sheller, groundnut roaster, local rice destoner, a machine that cleans local rice and other cereal grains such as wheat, cowpea, beniseed and soybean. The machine consists of a feeding screw conveyor, a detoning chamber mounted on a spring cum vibro-assisted frame, a blower, a cyclone and a power transmission system.“We also have a solar dryer used in the preservation of tomato and chili pepper. This was developed to eliminate losses during peak production periods. Losses of up to 50 per cent are recorded during the harvest season and we feel that something must be done to reduce this. Our solar dryer is capable of generating much higher air temperature and lower relative humidity within the drying chamber.”He explained that the machine also reduced the drying time by sun-drying method from 72 hours to 12 sunshine hours.“It also reduces the moisture content of the product from 8.75 per cent to 7.04 per cent,” he said.
Segun Olugbile writes that the giant strides being made by the Federal Institute of Industrial Research have brightened the nation’s chances of taming hunger
The days of post harvest losses caused by ineffective packaging and crops preservation may well be over in Nigeria. This is because scientists at the Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi, Lagos, have recorded some research breakthroughs capable of eliminating this untoward trend. The Director-General of FIIRO, Dr. Oluwole Olatunji, who disclosed this to our correspondent at the Lagos headquarters of FIIRO last Wednesday, said that a packaging cum preservative device that would prolong the shelf life of agricultural products and another one that would enhance the production of bio-fuel from cassava had been discovered by scientists at the institute.
FIIRO was established in 1956 to enhance the rapid industrialisation of the economy through the upgrading of the indigenous production processes. It has multidisciplinary staff comprising research scientists-microbiologists, food scientists, chemists, engineers and technologists, who are complemented by administrative and accounting staff.
Mountains of rotten mangoes, pineapples, oranges and tomatoes are usually the hallmarks of the nation’s markets after the annual harvest. Consequently, farmers and marketers of these products suffer huge losses, while exporters of cash crops such as cocoa, palm kernel and groundnut also gnash their teeth following losses they incur after their spoilt products must have been rejected by buyer at the world market.
This untoward trend has been giving stakeholders sleepless nights with some blaming the nation’s universities and research institutes for not rising to the occasion.
But Olatunji said that ignorance was responsible for such insinuation. “We are not sleeping here. We have been contributing to the industrial and food development sector of the nation’s economy. That is why the nation’s ranking on world hunger index declined to 50th from the 80th position we were in 2003. This is because of the new breakthroughs we have made. Before now, we already had over 60 technological designs and fabrication for food products processing, beverages, industrial raw materials, essential oils cosmetics and soaps to our credit.”
According to him, the over 60 research breakthroughs of FIIRO such as extrusion cooker, fish smoking kiln, oil expeller, vegetable oil filter press, grain degermer, dehuller and parboiler machines for instant pounded yam have been fabricated, tested and are being produced to encourage small and medium scale industries.
Besides, Olatunji added that FIIRO had also developed innovations in the area of food processing and production of industrial raw materials. These, he said, included a biogas converter and fertilizer machine, an essential oil distillation unit, an adhesive reactor for making glues and adhesives from cassava starch and a soap reactor for the manufacturing of laundry and toilet soaps.
On the new breakthroughs, Olatunji said that the huge losses being suffered by farmers, and by extension the country, informed the decision by FIIRO to conduct the research that led to the development of the packaging device.
He refused to give details of the device. Olatunji did not also agree to give details on its components. “You don’t let out your trade secrets,” he said.
But he assured that the device would help in no small way to reduce post-harvest losses in the country.
The FIIRO boss also disclosed that research on bio fuel was the result of scientific brainstorming brought about by occasional fuel scarcity that sometimes results in deaths. “We at FIIRO are proactive. What happens if the nation’s oil wells dry up? What alternative do we have? How do we drive the nation’s economy and the crises that this can engender? These questions are the catalysts that geared us up to embark on the research, and we are happy that the effort has paid off; we now have what we call bio-fuel from cassava.
According to him, the research is successful. He, however, advised the Federal Government not to implement the research report now because of the availability of crude oil. “I will advise that we hold on to this for now since our crude oil is still there in commercial quantity,” he said.
The FIIRO boss added that the new packaging device designed to prolong the shelf life of cash and food crops such as cocoa, palm kernel, oranges, mangoes and tomatoes had been sent to the Chemical Research Institute, Zaria, Kaduna State for further test before it would be patented for mass production.
He said, “The device will also be used to package dehydrated products such as smoked grasshoppers and local condiments and food seasoning such as iru and ogiri, which have been found to be much better than synthetic ones like Ajinomoto.
“We will soon start the production of the new packaging device capable of preserving food and cash crops such that the losses the nation has been witnessing in the agricultural sector will be eliminated.”
But FIIRO is not just about bio fuel and packaging device. Olatunji disclosed that the institute had done a lot of work on the upgrading of the status of cassava such that many products including noodles, chips, soy-bean, industrial starch, and bread have been derived from the food crop.
FIIRO, he said, had also developed groundnut sheller, groundnut roaster, local rice destoner, a machine that cleans local rice and other cereal grains such as wheat, cowpea, beniseed and soybean. The machine consists of a feeding screw conveyor, a detoning chamber mounted on a spring cum vibro-assisted frame, a blower, a cyclone and a power transmission system.
“We also have a solar dryer used in the preservation of tomato and chili pepper. This was developed to eliminate losses during peak production periods. Losses of up to 50 per cent are recorded during the harvest season and we feel that something must be done to reduce this. Our solar dryer is capable of generating much higher air temperature and lower relative humidity within the drying chamber.”
He explained that the machine also reduced the drying time by sun-drying method from 72 hours to 12 sunshine hours.
“It also reduces the moisture content of the product from 8.75 per cent to 7.04 per cent,” he said.
But why has the institute been finding it difficult to commercialise its research findings? Olatunji said that the absence of a law on intellectual property and patent was responsible for this.
“Until recently, intellectual property law was alien to the country and consequently scientists and researchers in the country could not patent their work,” he said.
This, he said, informed the decision of FIIRO to organise workshop and seminar where Nigerians were trained on how to use the research products to make money.
But with the nation’s adoption of the intellectual property law, Olatunji, said this trend would change. He, however, advised scientists and researchers in the nation’s research institutes and the university system to embark on relevant researches.
Olatunji identified inadequate funding, dearth of scientists and poaching of researchers from the institutes by universities as some of the challenges militating against the work of scientists and researchers in FIIRO.
“Science is expensive, so we need money and an enabling environment that can engender research practice. There must be constant and uninterrupted power supply and scientists must be exposed to international training but we are being hampered by inadequate fund.”
Olatunji said that for the institute to perform maximally in the next five years, it would need at least N6.5bn. “It is not until recently that we have 150 scientists out of the 500 workers that we have when the national policy says that 70 per cent of the workforce of a research institute should be scientists, researchers and laboratory technologists.
He, however, commended the Federal Government for its renewed drive at repositioning the institute through increased funding.
Similarly, the National President, Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions, Dr. Alasin Maji, said that research institutes across the country could turn around the fortunes of the country. But he regretted that neglect by successive governments had been their albatross.
According to him, this trend has led to a situation where scientists are leaving the research institutes for greener pastures abroad and lately to private universities that are ready to take their welfare seriously.
The union secretary, Deacon Theophilus Ndubaku reechoed this, but added that in spite of the challenges; the over 66 research institutes in the country had contributed immensely to the overall development of the country.
“We can do better with increased funding and better condition of service for workers in the research institutes,” Ndubaku added.
NIGERIA. The Punch - Lagos, 21 Oct 2008
Olatunji disclosed that the institute had done a lot of work on the upgrading of the status of cassava such that many products including noodles, chips, soy-bean, industrial starch, and bread have been derived from the food crop. FIIRO, he said, had also developed groundnut sheller, groundnut roaster, local rice destoner, a machine that cleans local rice and other cereal grains such as wheat, cowpea, beniseed and soybean. The machine consists of a feeding screw conveyor, a detoning chamber mounted on a spring cum vibro-assisted frame, a blower, a cyclone and a power transmission system.“We also have a solar dryer used in the preservation of tomato and chili pepper. This was developed to eliminate losses during peak production periods. Losses of up to 50 per cent are recorded during the harvest season and we feel that something must be done to reduce this. Our solar dryer is capable of generating much higher air temperature and lower relative humidity within the drying chamber.”He explained that the machine also reduced the drying time by sun-drying method from 72 hours to 12 sunshine hours.“It also reduces the moisture content of the product from 8.75 per cent to 7.04 per cent,” he said.
Segun Olugbile writes that the giant strides being made by the Federal Institute of Industrial Research have brightened the nation’s chances of taming hunger
The days of post harvest losses caused by ineffective packaging and crops preservation may well be over in Nigeria. This is because scientists at the Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi, Lagos, have recorded some research breakthroughs capable of eliminating this untoward trend. The Director-General of FIIRO, Dr. Oluwole Olatunji, who disclosed this to our correspondent at the Lagos headquarters of FIIRO last Wednesday, said that a packaging cum preservative device that would prolong the shelf life of agricultural products and another one that would enhance the production of bio-fuel from cassava had been discovered by scientists at the institute.
FIIRO was established in 1956 to enhance the rapid industrialisation of the economy through the upgrading of the indigenous production processes. It has multidisciplinary staff comprising research scientists-microbiologists, food scientists, chemists, engineers and technologists, who are complemented by administrative and accounting staff.
Mountains of rotten mangoes, pineapples, oranges and tomatoes are usually the hallmarks of the nation’s markets after the annual harvest. Consequently, farmers and marketers of these products suffer huge losses, while exporters of cash crops such as cocoa, palm kernel and groundnut also gnash their teeth following losses they incur after their spoilt products must have been rejected by buyer at the world market.
This untoward trend has been giving stakeholders sleepless nights with some blaming the nation’s universities and research institutes for not rising to the occasion.
But Olatunji said that ignorance was responsible for such insinuation. “We are not sleeping here. We have been contributing to the industrial and food development sector of the nation’s economy. That is why the nation’s ranking on world hunger index declined to 50th from the 80th position we were in 2003. This is because of the new breakthroughs we have made. Before now, we already had over 60 technological designs and fabrication for food products processing, beverages, industrial raw materials, essential oils cosmetics and soaps to our credit.”
According to him, the over 60 research breakthroughs of FIIRO such as extrusion cooker, fish smoking kiln, oil expeller, vegetable oil filter press, grain degermer, dehuller and parboiler machines for instant pounded yam have been fabricated, tested and are being produced to encourage small and medium scale industries.
Besides, Olatunji added that FIIRO had also developed innovations in the area of food processing and production of industrial raw materials. These, he said, included a biogas converter and fertilizer machine, an essential oil distillation unit, an adhesive reactor for making glues and adhesives from cassava starch and a soap reactor for the manufacturing of laundry and toilet soaps.
On the new breakthroughs, Olatunji said that the huge losses being suffered by farmers, and by extension the country, informed the decision by FIIRO to conduct the research that led to the development of the packaging device.
He refused to give details of the device. Olatunji did not also agree to give details on its components. “You don’t let out your trade secrets,” he said.
But he assured that the device would help in no small way to reduce post-harvest losses in the country.
The FIIRO boss also disclosed that research on bio fuel was the result of scientific brainstorming brought about by occasional fuel scarcity that sometimes results in deaths. “We at FIIRO are proactive. What happens if the nation’s oil wells dry up? What alternative do we have? How do we drive the nation’s economy and the crises that this can engender? These questions are the catalysts that geared us up to embark on the research, and we are happy that the effort has paid off; we now have what we call bio-fuel from cassava.
According to him, the research is successful. He, however, advised the Federal Government not to implement the research report now because of the availability of crude oil. “I will advise that we hold on to this for now since our crude oil is still there in commercial quantity,” he said.
The FIIRO boss added that the new packaging device designed to prolong the shelf life of cash and food crops such as cocoa, palm kernel, oranges, mangoes and tomatoes had been sent to the Chemical Research Institute, Zaria, Kaduna State for further test before it would be patented for mass production.
He said, “The device will also be used to package dehydrated products such as smoked grasshoppers and local condiments and food seasoning such as iru and ogiri, which have been found to be much better than synthetic ones like Ajinomoto.
“We will soon start the production of the new packaging device capable of preserving food and cash crops such that the losses the nation has been witnessing in the agricultural sector will be eliminated.”
But FIIRO is not just about bio fuel and packaging device. Olatunji disclosed that the institute had done a lot of work on the upgrading of the status of cassava such that many products including noodles, chips, soy-bean, industrial starch, and bread have been derived from the food crop.
FIIRO, he said, had also developed groundnut sheller, groundnut roaster, local rice destoner, a machine that cleans local rice and other cereal grains such as wheat, cowpea, beniseed and soybean. The machine consists of a feeding screw conveyor, a detoning chamber mounted on a spring cum vibro-assisted frame, a blower, a cyclone and a power transmission system.
“We also have a solar dryer used in the preservation of tomato and chili pepper. This was developed to eliminate losses during peak production periods. Losses of up to 50 per cent are recorded during the harvest season and we feel that something must be done to reduce this. Our solar dryer is capable of generating much higher air temperature and lower relative humidity within the drying chamber.”
He explained that the machine also reduced the drying time by sun-drying method from 72 hours to 12 sunshine hours.
“It also reduces the moisture content of the product from 8.75 per cent to 7.04 per cent,” he said.
But why has the institute been finding it difficult to commercialise its research findings? Olatunji said that the absence of a law on intellectual property and patent was responsible for this.
“Until recently, intellectual property law was alien to the country and consequently scientists and researchers in the country could not patent their work,” he said.
This, he said, informed the decision of FIIRO to organise workshop and seminar where Nigerians were trained on how to use the research products to make money.
But with the nation’s adoption of the intellectual property law, Olatunji, said this trend would change. He, however, advised scientists and researchers in the nation’s research institutes and the university system to embark on relevant researches.
Olatunji identified inadequate funding, dearth of scientists and poaching of researchers from the institutes by universities as some of the challenges militating against the work of scientists and researchers in FIIRO.
“Science is expensive, so we need money and an enabling environment that can engender research practice. There must be constant and uninterrupted power supply and scientists must be exposed to international training but we are being hampered by inadequate fund.”
Olatunji said that for the institute to perform maximally in the next five years, it would need at least N6.5bn. “It is not until recently that we have 150 scientists out of the 500 workers that we have when the national policy says that 70 per cent of the workforce of a research institute should be scientists, researchers and laboratory technologists.
He, however, commended the Federal Government for its renewed drive at repositioning the institute through increased funding.
Similarly, the National President, Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions, Dr. Alasin Maji, said that research institutes across the country could turn around the fortunes of the country. But he regretted that neglect by successive governments had been their albatross.
According to him, this trend has led to a situation where scientists are leaving the research institutes for greener pastures abroad and lately to private universities that are ready to take their welfare seriously.
The union secretary, Deacon Theophilus Ndubaku reechoed this, but added that in spite of the challenges; the over 66 research institutes in the country had contributed immensely to the overall development of the country.
“We can do better with increased funding and better condition of service for workers in the research institutes,” Ndubaku added.
Bio-ethanol plant to kill river
By Grace Cantal-Albasin
PHILIPPINES Inquirer.net - Mindanao Bureau Oct. 20, 2008
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines -- The construction of a government-backed, privately-led bio-ethanol project in the villages of Bayanga and Mambuaya here could kill the Cagayan De Oro River, an environmental conservation group warned on Saturday. Because of this, the Kagay-an Watershed Alliance (Kawal) vowed to oppose the P2.4 billion project that Alsons Consolidated Resources (ACR) plans to build on a 17-hectare area shared by the two villages.
Kawal said the city's main river system, where a 12-kilometer white-water rafting course is also found, runs through the two villages.
In a statement, Kawal said it would resort to civil disobedience if the project pushes through. Councilor Ian Acenas, chair of the Sangguniang Panlungsod's environment committee, told the Inquirer that ACR has assured the city government that it will use a state-of-the-art water treatment facility to safeguard the environment and protect the communities around the plant.
He said public hearings in the two villages “showed a positive turnout as residents welcomed the project."
But Kawal said ACR could not possibly control contamination because it will use cassava, which has natural cyanide contents, in its production of bio-ethanol.
Mario Jose Baile, ACR business development manager, admitted they will use cassava in the production of bio-ethanol.
But Baile clarified that the plant will only process dried cassava. He said dried cassava chips do not contain cyanide anymore.
Even then, Baile said they will still treat their waste water to ensure that no contaminant will find its way to the river.
"The first stage of water treatment will be treating the water effluent to produce methane that can supplement the fuel of the boiler which will help in the reduction of carbon emission," he said. "If there is a possibility of disposal, we assure the public that we will follow the highest standards of government regulation to prevent harming the environment," Baile said.
Maria Luisa Rubic, chair of the Southwest Watershed Alliance, told the Inquirer that ACR should have gone to an industrial area and not to the two barangays, which are part of the city's tourism map.
"Alsons should have gone there (in Misamis Oriental) and not to this agri-farm ecotourism land, where tourism is already flourishing and the protection of the environment is highly needed to sustain it," Rubic said
PHILIPPINES Inquirer.net - Mindanao Bureau Oct. 20, 2008
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines -- The construction of a government-backed, privately-led bio-ethanol project in the villages of Bayanga and Mambuaya here could kill the Cagayan De Oro River, an environmental conservation group warned on Saturday. Because of this, the Kagay-an Watershed Alliance (Kawal) vowed to oppose the P2.4 billion project that Alsons Consolidated Resources (ACR) plans to build on a 17-hectare area shared by the two villages.
Kawal said the city's main river system, where a 12-kilometer white-water rafting course is also found, runs through the two villages.
In a statement, Kawal said it would resort to civil disobedience if the project pushes through. Councilor Ian Acenas, chair of the Sangguniang Panlungsod's environment committee, told the Inquirer that ACR has assured the city government that it will use a state-of-the-art water treatment facility to safeguard the environment and protect the communities around the plant.
He said public hearings in the two villages “showed a positive turnout as residents welcomed the project."
But Kawal said ACR could not possibly control contamination because it will use cassava, which has natural cyanide contents, in its production of bio-ethanol.
Mario Jose Baile, ACR business development manager, admitted they will use cassava in the production of bio-ethanol.
But Baile clarified that the plant will only process dried cassava. He said dried cassava chips do not contain cyanide anymore.
Even then, Baile said they will still treat their waste water to ensure that no contaminant will find its way to the river.
"The first stage of water treatment will be treating the water effluent to produce methane that can supplement the fuel of the boiler which will help in the reduction of carbon emission," he said. "If there is a possibility of disposal, we assure the public that we will follow the highest standards of government regulation to prevent harming the environment," Baile said.
Maria Luisa Rubic, chair of the Southwest Watershed Alliance, told the Inquirer that ACR should have gone to an industrial area and not to the two barangays, which are part of the city's tourism map.
"Alsons should have gone there (in Misamis Oriental) and not to this agri-farm ecotourism land, where tourism is already flourishing and the protection of the environment is highly needed to sustain it," Rubic said
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