No black sand mining – EMB
NEWS REPORTS REFUTED
LINGAYEN–There is no black sand mining behind the high walls along the shoreline adjacent to the golf course project in the eco-tourism zone in Lingayen.
This was the conclusion of an inspection team led by the regional head of the DENR – Environment Management Bureau (EMB) after she and leaders of a local non-government organization and officials of the barangays affected made an on-site inspection of the unfinished golf course project.
EMB Ilocos regional chief M. Victoria Abrera said her team did not find any mining activity hidden behind the walls inside the proposed golf course. The golf course was planned by the provincial government to be the centerpiece of a bigger eco-tourism complex.
Abrera told the news media that the investigators only saw an old stockpile of magnetite sand, cows grazing, bathers in the beach, two fishing boats, fleet of tricycles.
Three news stories published in a national daily last month by-lined by its Pangasinan correspondent, had alleged that black sand or magnetite mining continued behind a six-feet, three-kilometer wall that separates the project site from four Lingayen villages.
All three stories quoted a certain Rolando Rea as the only source of the series.
Orpheus Velasco, provincial information officer, lamented that the government’s side and that of the developer were not included in the one-sided series of stories that unfairly painted a negative image of the government.
Abrera said the walls extended to about 2.5 kilometers long and were three to five feet in height, not six feet as claimed in the published news reports and were apparently built to prevent squatters from occupying portions of the project site.
She added that there were no barbed wires atop the concrete fence, contrary to the reports.
Velasco said the claim in the news report that the walls, built five years ago and prevented residents of barangays Estanza, Sabangan, Malimpuec and Capandanan access to the sea, their main source of livelihood was also found untrue by the inspection team.
Abrera’s team of inspectors saw three access entrances to the sea, one as wide as six meters, and the two other were four meters wide. “The access entrances had no gates that could prevent residents from passing through the project site to the sea,” she pointed out.
The EMB team was joined by officials of the three affected barangays led by Sabangan Barangay Kagawad Vicente Oliquino who also headed the Aroen Mo Ak Sambayanan (AROMAS), an environment advocacy group that first complained about the reported black sand mining.
In a separate interview, Oliquino debunked the newspaper’s claims and described the authors of the reports as “master twisters of facts and inveterate liars.”
Velasco said all subsequent investigations made by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau and the EMB after each publicity on the mining issue in the national dailies found the news reports on illegal mining and quarrying as baseless.
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