Huge, oversized illegal fish pens owned by few
PERMITS ISSUED BY LIM ADMINISTRATION
THE huge illegal fish pens that were removed and demolished painstakingly over a four- year period by then Mayor Belen Fernandez before 2019 were restored during the Brian Lim administration and fully operating in violation of the city’s fishery code that allows only fish cages, not fish pens.
This was the scene that met Mayor Fernandez when she conducted and ocular inspection of the city’s rivers (Calmay River, Dawel River, Tanap River) and the island barangays of Pugaro, Salapingao, Lomboy, Calmay and Carael on Tuesday along with City Agriculturist Patrick Dizon and members of the city’s Bantay Ilog Task Force headed by Kagawad Abel Abueme.
She said she’s convinced that the presence of the hundreds of oversized fish pens have been contributing highly not only to the constriction of water associated to the recurrent floods in Dagupan’s low-lying barangays, but has been affecting the quality of water that often led to pollution and fish kills, as well as big eyesores in the rivers.
Fernandez said that there are illegal fish pens that are 20,000 to 30,000 square meter built along the rivers and she found out that 15 fish pens of these sizes are owned by one businessman.
Other fish pens’ sizes range from 300, 400, 600, 800, 1,000 and 1,200 square meters and mostly owned by non-residents who obviously don’t have Aquatic Lease Agreements (ALA) with the Dagupan City government unlike fish cage owners who must be residents of the barangay and are required to secure ALA .
“We have to start cleaning our rivers once again,” she said as she consulted fisherfolks in Bonuan Gueset, Pugaro and in other island barangays about the presence of the illegal fish pens in their barangays.
Mayor Fernandez said that under the city’s fishery code, no structure can be put up in all rivers without permissions from the barangays but the fish pen owners bypassed the barangays and merely claimed they had permits from the city hall.
City Agriculturist Dizon echoed the mayor’s determination that the mushrooming of illegal fish pens in the rivers during the past city administration contributed to the floods in Dagupan since they block the flow of water to the sea during high tide.
He revealed that the rivers of Dagupan are on the verge of an environmental disaster.
Bantay Ilog Task Force head Abueme said they had just completed the validation of all illegal fish pens in the rivers and called on the owners of the illegal fish pens “to voluntarily demolish their structures if they wish to save their nets and bamboos” because these will break when the city government starts demolishing their structures.
Most of the fish pens inspected were still stocked with bangus fingerlings while a few have been abandoned and emptied. (Leonardo Micua)
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