"Think again."
President Rodrigo Duterte recently made known his strong opposition to any reclamation projects within 100 kilometers of Manila Bay.
In his pronouncement, Duterte said it is unlikely he will approve the “mind-boggling” reclamation of Manila Bay, from Navotas City to Cavite province, “as long as there is no guarantee that the environment will be protected.” This was in response to the proposal of property developers for 25 projects which would reclaim 10,000 hectares of Manila Bay.
In fact, in February last year, Duterte stripped the National Economic and Development Authority of the power to approve reclamation projects and transferred it to the Philippine Reclamation Authority, which he also put directly under his office.
Duterte’s stance against reclamation earned the support of senior lawmaker Buhay Rep. Lito Atienza as he aired a warning it would demolish vital coastal ecosystems at a time when the National Capital Region is reeling from high fish prices amid declining harvests.
According to Atienza, former three-term mayor of Manila, “the proposed reclamation projects from the private sector are just meant to create large tracts of valuable new land and wealth for some oligarchs out there, at the grave expense of the environment.”
Worse, “these unwanted projects are bound to wipe out entire ecosystems, further degrade Manila Bay’s water quality and disrupt the food chain in a big way,” Atienza, one-time secretary of Environment and Natural Resources, added.
And once destroyed, these underwater biological communities and their physical environment can never be recovered.
“They will be gone forever if the projects are allowed to push through,” Atienza laments.
So the question he raises is: “What is the point of rehabilitating Manila Bay if the government is just going to allow private developers to bulldoze entire reef areas?”
Nice point.
But what’s more disturbing is that besides reducing Manila Bay’s 190-kilometer coastline, Atienza warned that the reclamation projects would usher in new highly pollutive activities around the water body. And flooded communities.
Which then brings us to the issue of the Bulacan Airport.
As former press attachè to the Philippine Embassy in Washington, Ado Paglinawan insists that the mega project touted to deliver us from the miseries of the overcrowded NAIA terminals will only spell disaster, not only for Bulacan but for the whole of Metro Manila and adjacent provinces.
Paglinawan says the project will cause adverse environmental impact because of the interconnecting over and underground river basin systems and network of river deltas behind the coastlines of the entire Manila Bay.
For as it is, the entire project will rest on 3,300 hectares of fishponds which will be reclaimed for the project.
And that is where the debate begins. Is the Bulacan Airport a reclamation project or not?
The proponents insist it is not. Ado says it’s otherwise.
Land reclamation, usually known as reclamation, and also known as land fill, is defined as the process of creating new land from bodies of water like oceans, seas, riverbeds or lake beds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamation ground or land fill. Where does the Bulacan Airport qualify? Are the fishponds to be reclaimed, an extension of the riverbed or even that of Manila Bay?
Paglinawan says both as the fishponds concerned are again, interconnected over and underground river basin systems and network of river deltas behind the coastlines of the entire Manila Bay.
Paglinawan says that even without the Bulacan Airport, there is already a warning of a clear and present danger to human lives and safety for all those in the areas affected by the interconnections.
And he has been proven right. The week-long rains that befell the metropolis in August last year inundated streets resulting in horrific traffic conditions and sent schools to close for several days.
And it is aside the fact that in its present condition, there are already areas in Bulacan where the municipalities have already raised streets and drainage canals by one meter, causing the inundation to seep and dwell on the ground floors of residential communities for months.
So, if Duterte is strongly against any form of reclamation within the scope of Manila Bay and Atienza is equally supportive of this, then they have to go beyond the immediate confines of the Bay and include the proposed Bulacan Airport as a major issue of concern.
To borrow Congressman Atienza’s words, “once they are lost, they can never be recovered forever.”
