Art Lomibao’s Library

By Jun Velasco

TEN years back, we had an exciting speed-boat round of the beautiful island province of Guimaras, thanks to the Lopez couple, former congressman Albertito Lopez and his wife, Emily, also a former member of congress, who made our visit possible.

Emily spoke a week earlier before the Manila Bay Breakfast Club about Guimaras’ pristine beauty.

The island was teeming with vegetation, mango plantations, marine wealth, sturdy and friendly villagers. At that time, then President Ramos made a pitch in the Manila papers for Guimaras’mangoes which, he said, were “the best in the world” and enjoying brisk sales in the global market to the chagrin of our Pangasinan mangoes. How this old man dare put down his province-mates, we thought.

When Emily brought out some ripe Guimaras mangoes and let us eat one, two or three slices of the fruit, we instantly understood FVR’s bias for Guimaras mangoes.

All this beauty of Guimaras was lately tarnished by the worst oil spill that damaged the island. 

Our Lingayen Gulf has similarly experienced oil spills but they were nothing compared to the Guimaras tragedy.

Our Gulf and its tributaries are being damaged   by a different kind of “spill” — the mountain of fish feed residues from   the mushrooming fish pens and fish cages in our rivers.

  You’ve read those accounts of thousands of dead fish floating on our river systems due to the ubiquitous pens. Marine life is sacrificed for the fast buck in these chemical-laced fish feeds.

But a local hero has emerged out there. Mayor Sammy Rosario of Binmaley was able to stop the carnage in his fish-rich town.  We witnessed his dismantling of Binmaley’s fish pens.  Mayor Benjie Lim of Dagupan City and Mayor Nestor Pulido of Anda were the first to launch the dismantling of fish pens in their respective LGUs, but they failed to complete the job. They didn’t have Mayor Rosario’s grit.

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 While we were having coffee at the Royal Mandaya Hotel’s lobby in Davao City last week, new National Irrigation Administrator Art Lomibao wondered why the city can produce community dailies with several pages while Dagupan City cannot. 

We earlier discussed the subject in a dinner with the Garcias of Cebu, publishing moguls in the Queen City of the south. Their Sun Star Daily has from 76 to l06 pages daily!

Is the number of community newspapers an index of economic progress of the area?

 Dagupan once “experimented” to publish a daily, ironically owned by the Garcias of Cebu and partly by Rotarian Rudy Aquino and Mayor Benjie Lim, the Sun Star-Pangasinan Daily, but died a natural death after 8 years.

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