Health and Environment

Sidebar

A watchdog in need
of watching

by Jaileen F. Jimeno

THE Provincial Mining and Regulatory Board (PMRB) acts like the environment department’s eyes and ears on the ground when it comes to how mining is being carried out in a particular, well, province. Among other things, a governor approves the issuance of a small-scale mining contract only upon the recommendation of the board.

Read more... | Posted Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Firms mining watershed,
forest areas of Zambales

by Jaileen F. Jimeno

STA. CRUZ, ZAMBALES – For nearly two years now, Leonardo Lustria Jr., manager of the Sta. Cruz water district, has been at his wit’s end trying to find ways to protect the town’s watershed, which feeds Sta. Cruz’s two irrigation systems and provides local folk with potable water.

Some 20 kms from the town proper, the Sta. Cruz watershed was also reforested more than a decade ago through an P18.1-million loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) project, which called for the planting of mahogany, acacia, agoho, eucalyptus, and other types of trees, was carried out from 1994 to 1999.

Read more... | Posted Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
Sidebar

Jobs, mines, power, violence

by Jaileen F. Jimeno

ZAMBALES is not new to mining. Acoje Mining dug for chromite in Sta Cruz for 75 years beginning in the 1930s. In 1934, Benguet Corporation began to extract chromite from the mountains of nearby Masinloc town, and continued doing so for half a century. In San Marcelino town, the Benguet-Dizon firm leveled mountains for gold, easing up only when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991.

Read more... | Posted Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Mining mayhem triggers
eco-disaster in Zambales

by Jaileen F. Jimeno

STA. CRUZ, ZAMBALES – Nickel is not doing too well in the world market these days, but residents here do not seem to mind, even though nickel has become one of this town’s major revenue earners.

That’s because whenever nickel commands top dollar, red dust smothers the town’s main highway and the pier, and red mud cakes the roads. Residents also have to share their small barangay roads with huge, lumbering trucks, and when rains come, floodwaters the color of blood fill their ricefields. Meanwhile, up in the mountains, armed guards hired by mining firms menace real and imagined foes and sometimes engage each other in deadly shootouts.

Read more... | Posted Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Confident about ‘confidential’ deal?

Ahead of contract, San Miguel starts
to court Laiban residents

by Ed Lingao and Jaemark Tordecilla

SAN ANDRES, Tanay, Rizal – We were wondering why Sofia de la Rosa seemed a little agitated with our presence. After all, it’s not every day that visitors bother to come to this remote barangay nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Madre range.

In the course of our conversation, the barangay captain of San Andres also kept telling us that her people will not leave this village unless they are paid proper compensation by San Miguel.

Read more... | Posted Monday, July 13th, 2009
Video

Sweat of the Sierra Madre

by Ed Lingao

The Lematin River forms the western arm of the proposed Laiban Dam watershed and reservoir. This river supports seven of the eight barangays that will be submerged when the dam project finally pushes through.

Read more... | Posted Sunday, July 12th, 2009
Sidebar

‘Playground of the Gods’

IT IS Luzon island’s roof and highest peak, and the Philippines’ second highest, after Mount Apo in Mindanao. Now that it is almost summertime, Mount Pulag is bound to be at its busiest, having earned a spot on the itinerary of many nature-lovers and mountaineers.

But for the indigenous Ibaloi, Mount Pulag (also called Pulog) is where the gods live, rest, and play year-round.

Read more... | Posted Friday, March 27th, 2009
Mining in Mount Pulag

Village folk resist illegal deals,
‘bribes’ for leaders

by Arthur L. Allad-iw and Harley Palangchao

BOKOD, BENGUET — As Lakay Felipe Leano recalls it, newly planted rice seedlings in his village in Bobok-Bisal, Bokod had shriveled and died soon after a major Philippine mining firm began exploring for gold and other metals in the area.

The company denied having caused the drying up of a local creek that had helped irrigate Bokod rice fields. But petitions from the likes of Leano, an Otbong village elder, eventually led the local government to stop the firm’s exploration activities.

Read more... | Posted Friday, March 27th, 2009

A mess of mines

by Karol Anne M. Ilagan

CLOSING DOWN a mine is not just a matter of giving employees their walking papers and putting a padlock on the door. Indeed, when a mine ceases operations, a full-blown cleanup (plus sometimes an orderly dismantling) follows. Or at least that is what should happen.

Over the last three decades, several large-scale mines in the country have been shut down because of economic loss, labor disputes, or a rejected mining application. But none of these mines was rehabilitated right after closure; unfortunately, government regulations at the time lacked the provision to enforce remediation. Those regulations came in 1996, when guidelines on mine rehabilitation and decommissioning were set in the implementing rules and regulations of the Mining Act of 1995.

Read more... | Posted Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
Sidebar

Of tribal leaders and dealers

by Isa Lorenzo

IT MAY be just an unhappy coincidence that TVI’s activities in Canatuan began in 1997, the same year a mine-tailings accident occurred at the Marcopper Mining Corporation site in Boac, Marinduque. The mishap, which involved Vancouver-based Placer Dome, Inc, is still considered the worst in Philippine mining history. TVI’s projects do not seem to be challengers for that dishonor, but the company has nevertheless encountered one controversy after another in Canatuan, some 800 kms south of Manila.

Read more... | Posted Monday, December 29th, 2008

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