We need to see action, mayor says

Residents of Guimaras join a prayer rally at the Nueva Valencia public plaza to demand the removal of the oil from the sunken tanker Solar I and for assistance from the government and Petron. Photo from Panay News web site

BY NESTOR P. BURGOS
Panay News, Oct. 25, 2006

NUEVA VALENCIA, Guimaras – “We welcome the report that finally the oil will be recovered. But we need to see action rather than words. That is what we have been waiting for these past 73 days,” Nueva Valencia town Mayor Diosdado Gonzaga said yesterday.

About 500 residents from 10 villages severely affected by the oil spill yesterday joined a prayer rally at the Nueva Valencia public plaza to demand the removal of the remaining oil from the tanker and for assistance from the government and Petron for rehabilitation and livelihood.

The rally led by the Save Our Lives, SOS! Panay and Guimaras was also joined by Gonzaga, provincial board member Josephine de la Cruz and barangay officials from Guiwanon, Canhawan, Napandong, Lucmayan, Pandaraonan, Dolores, Tando, San Rogue, Igang and Sto. Domingo.

It was also joined by the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, United Church of Christ of the Philippines, Madia-as Ecological Movement, Gabriela and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan.

“We want President (Macapagal-Arroyo) to ensure that the oil from the tanker will be removed because we will not have any peace as long as it is there,” Simeona Molato, 65, barangay health worker in the island-village of Guiwanon said.

Fr. Andy Mark Loma, Save Our Lives, SOS! spokesperson, said the plight of the affected residents especially the evacuees have been “forgotten.”

“They need continued support especially since the work offered by Petron has been stopped,” Lona said.

Take the ‘Xtra challenge’ Petron!

In a series of messages flashed along Metro Manila’s main thoroughfares, Greenpeace yesterday told Petron to take the “extra challenge” and stop their oil spill that continues to menace human lives and the environment. The messages, parodies of Petron’s ubiquitous “Xtra challenge” ads, were projected onto walls and buildings along EDSA and other roads in Metro Manila. Photo from Greenpeace web site

Click here for the story.

Donors’ forum on Guimaras

From Task Force Sunrise

FUNDING institutions and non-government organizations that would want to rehabilitate the disaster-stricken province of Guimaras will be presenting their respective plans in a forum this week as an initial step at harmonizing all assistance for communities ruined by the Petron oil spill.

Dubbed “Guimaras Donors’ Forum,” the activity will serve as the provincial government’s primary mechanism for facilitating substantive dialogue and harmonization of development assistance that flooded Guimaras following what has now become the country’s worst environmental disaster.

The forum, set on October 26, 2006 at the Shirven Hotel in Barangay San Miguel in Jordan town, is organized by the provincial government of Guimaras through Task Force Sunrise, the quick response team created to address the disaster.

“This will serve as venue where the province and the donors can discuss coordination and areas for collaboration for the rehabilitation of the island and at the same time finalize commitments to various programs and initiatives,” says Guimaras Gov. Rahman Nava, MD., also the task force chair.

At least 11 international funding and relief agencies have already confirmed attendance to the forum, among them the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the German Development Cooperation (GTZ), World Vision International and the United Nations Development Programme.

NGOs attending the forum include the Petron Foundation, Mirant, Peace and Equity Foundation, the Philippine Business for Social Progress and the Panay Rural Development Council.

The forum will be highlighted by the presentation of the rapid assessment report on the extent of the damage wrought by the Petron oil spill and the framework for rehabilitation of the provincial government.

On the other hand, international agencies and NGOs will be given 10 minutes each to present their programs for Guimaras, their capacity and their resources.

Petron oil spill blamed for drop in fish catch

By DAVID ISRAEL SINAY
Panay News, Oct. 25, 2006

ILOILO City – The oil spill caused by the sinking of Petron Corp.’s chartered vessel, M/T Solar 1 caused a drop in fish catch in affected coastal barangays, fishery experts said during yesterday’s 1st Western Visayas Bangus Congress.

The oil spill also drove away fishes from spawning in the coastal areas of Arevalo District in Iloilo City all the way to the shores of Antique Province – considered as the “fry ground” of Western Visayas.

“Inevitably, the planktons and fish eggs, among others will be affected. Eventually, it will impair the marine ecosystem,” Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) Regional Director Drusila Esther Ong told Panay News.

Fishes have the tendency to “look for better breeding ground” or “other areas for habitat,” added Ong.

“If the places in their life stages are affected, they are also affected,” Ong disclosed. “Mangroves are their hatchery ground. Mangroves were disrupted. Their trunks were covered (with bunker fuel).”

Meanwhile, Ong said most pond operators still prefer traditional fish production. Most preferred for this, Ong said, is the wild milkfish because of its longer survival characteristic compared to hatchery-bred fingerlings.

Furthermore, Department of Trade and Industry Provincial Director Diosdado Cadena revealed that the oil spill has affected the survival rate of the fingerlings, hurting pond operators of wild milkfish.

“Fingerlings, initially, is a very technical input for fish producers. The disaster caused an incremental increase on the prices of the (wild milkfish) fingerlings. Cost of production is affected,” Cadena disclosed.

He said that fish producers have the tendency to adjust rather than just deal with the prices in the market.

Fish are jumping, but living not easy

By Leila Salaverria
Inquirer, Oct. 25, 2006

(Third of a series of an I-Team Report)

FISH ARE jumping, but the living is not easy on oil-smeared Guimaras.

Spooked by the worst environmental disaster in the nation’s history following the sinking of the MT Solar I on Aug. 11 off the island-province, fishermen aren’t going after what used to be the main source of their livelihood.

“There seems to be a lot of fish visible actually now from the shoreline of Guimaras and the people are just looking at them,” says Rafael Coscolluela, presidential adviser for western Visayas who is in charge of recovery operations in the area.

“Not yet, they were told,” Coscolluela says.

The Department of Health issued warnings on food safety in the affected coastline after the Solar I sank in stormy waters off Guimaras while ferrying 2.1 million liters of bunker fuel oil for Petron Corp. from Bataan to Zamboanga.

A 24-member research team from Silliman University commissioned by Petron conducted a weeklong rapid assessment and found that the oil spill had polluted 184 kilometers of coastline, 1,141 hectares of the mangrove ecosystem and about 88 ha of seagrass beds in Guimaras alone. It also spoiled tourist resorts and polluted fish haunts.

Coral reefs do not appear to have been affected, the team reported. (Site administrator: An independent Seafdec report disputes this.)

(For the full story, Fish jumping.)

Reinventing Guimaras: An island of unfulfilled dreams

ROUGHLY the size of Singapore, the sleepy island-province of Guimaras has been rudely roused from its dreamy slumber by a 20th-century environmental scourge – an oil spill.

Ironically, this may also catapult it to 21st-century modernity if development plans are achieved.

By law, the island was made a province in 1992, when it belonged to the derogatory “Club 20” of the poorest provinces in the country. Unable to create jobs for lack of investments, its local government units were also unable to deliver basic services to their poorest.

Guimaras became a province after the passage of the Local Government Code that transferred to local government units (LGUs) the task of providing basic services, which the national government used to do. The law also devolved to LGU personnel, assets, equipment and the tough task of economic survival.

Unfortunately, the new local governments did not have the proper structures, leadership, technical competence and resources to handle the demands of “devolved governance.”

Many development experts feel the province will have to dramatically reinvent itself if it is to fulfill the development promise brought about by its misfortune.

(For the full story, click Reinventing Guimaras, Oct. 25, 2006.)

PBSP bares P131.5M Guimaras rehab program

THE Philippine Business for Social Program (PBSP), a corporate-led foundation dedicated to the promotion of business sector involvement in social development, is proposing a P131.5-million rehabilitation program for Guimaras.

The program, according to its 31-page “Guimaras Area Resource Management Program” report, has three components, namely rehabilitation of the socio-economic system, resource or environmental regeneration and organizational development.

Under its proposal, PBSP and its members would be shelling out P81.6 million or 62 percent of the total program cost, while the government and the community will put up a counterpart of P11.4 million and P5.7 million respectively. The remaining P32 million will be sourced from other initiatives.

The funds will then cover livelihood rehabilitation (P90.7 million), ecological system rehabilitation (P12.5 million), organization system and basic services (P19.5 million), and administration (P8.7 million), adds the report.

“The goal of the (program) is the economic rehabilitation of the communities affected by the oil spill through business sector commitment and the provision of livelihood interventions that provides income above the poverty threshold,” the report said.

(For the full story, click Sunstar Iloilo, Oct. 25, 2006.)

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AFTER failing miserably in living up to Petron’s CSR, chairman Nick Alcantara has managed to hoodwink some of the most honorable CEOs on PBSP’s Board of Trustees to spend for what his company should be paying for in the first place.

Check out this link to know the good people on PBSP’s Board of Trustees, and the other members who have sadly colluded with Petron in downplaying the Guimaras oil spill.

Microbes eating oil in Pandacan to the rescue

SCIENTISTS and scholars, as well as engineers and environmentalists, will have to be adept both in operating robotic arms from submersibles and seeding oil-eating microbes to find a lasting solution to the oil spill from Guimaras island-province. Luckily, they don’t have to look far.

Experts from the Department of Science and Technology (DoST) have found an indigenous source of oil-gobbling bacteria that can clean up Guimaras in a jiffy.
Unfortunately, the bacteria, found in great abundance in the oil rich esteros (creeks) of the oil depots in Pandacan, Manila, will have to give up their lives in the process of cleaning up the oil.

But scientists are not worried over the microbes’ supreme sacrifice. The microbes can multiply as quickly as they gobble up the oil – at the prodigious rate of doubling their population every 20 minutes. This translates to a reproductive rate of 7,200 times a day, according to DoST scientists.

The bacteria, scientifically known as Pseudomonas aeroginosa, is one of four indigenous oleophiliac (oil-eating) microbes that can be inoculated into oil spills to wipe them out in no time at all, says engineer Romeo N. Cabacang, chief of the Microbiology and Genetics Division-Industrial Technology Development Institute of the DoST.

Cabacang says the microbe, which thrives in the oil-rich esteros of Pandacan, is not only a voracious oil-eater but also a prodigious reproducer.

(For the full story, click INQ7.Net, Oct. 24, 2006.)

Greenpeace urges Petron to hasten oil retrieval

• Protest message: ‘73 days and still ticking’

By Tarra Quismundo
Inquirer, Oct. 25, 2006

BUILDINGS, fences and every free surface in Makati City were turned into walls of protest on Monday night when environmental advocates toured the country’s financial district to rouse an oil giant allegedly sleeping on its responsibility for the country’s worst oil spill.

Armed with a powerful manual projector, members of Greenpeace Southeast Asia displayed around the city their demands for Petron Corp. to own up to its liability in the massive oil spill that hit the coasts of Guimaras and Iloilo.

“We have noticed that there are efforts to downplay the role of Petron in the oil spill, while it should be the one mainly accountable. We want to target the public to pressure Petron…this is the only way to neutralize the efforts to downplay its [liability],” said Beau Baconguis, Greenpeace toxics campaigner for Southeast Asia.

Like ticking time bomb

On walls, buildings and even the steel Metro Rail Transit (MRT) tracks over Guadalupe Bridge, Greenpeace volunteers directed messages urging Petron to pay for the retrieval of the MT Solar I, the Petron-chartered tanker which sank off Guimaras on Aug. 11 amid turbulent waters while carrying 2.1 million liters of bunker fuel oil.

“Guimaras is like a ticking time bomb. Why is it taking too long to retrieve the oil? The threat to marine life will continue until oil [in the tanker’s hold] is retrieved,” Baconguis told the Inquirer.

Among the messages displayed were “73 days and still ticking,” in reference to the number of days since oil began leaking from the Solar I, and “Petron, take the xtra-challenge,” a dare which parodies the oil firm’s commercial.

“Petron should take the challenge to stop the oil spill,” Baconguis said.

The group had originally planned to project the messages onto white cloth that volunteer climbers would hang from an empty billboard frame on the northbound side of EDSA’s Guadalupe stretch. But its projector proved powerless against the strong lights illuminating surrounding commercial billboards. The group then decided to use friendlier surfaces.

Monday night’s protest was part of Greenpeace’s effort to air its demand for Petron to “speed up the process of extracting the oil as soon as possible by guaranteeing the expected costs, immediately intensifying relief operations, committing to pay for the continuing cleanup, rehabilitating and monitoring the area (Guimaras), and compensating [affected] communities for [residents’] lost income since Aug. 11 up to at least a year,” the group said in a statement.