Mining ban beneficial to Pangasinan

By Leonardo Micua

 

TH prevalence of illegal mining activities in Benguet, which was exposed bare by the recent disaster that struck a mining community in Itogon where 50 people were buried alive and 50 others are still missing, should serve as alarm bells to our residents in the province experiencing recurrent floods.

Mining as an extractive activity produces loose soil particles that always find their way into the river systems whose water drains into Pangasinan before emptying into the Lingayen Gulf.

It also produces tailing that could be washed down the rivers that causes sedimentation of river beds and even blanket whole farms and fishponds, making them less productive. Worse, mine tailing carries with it hazardous arsenic, mercury and cadmium, the substances used by miners to recover precious metals like gold and silver, from rocks that passed crude ball mills. These could be ingested by the fish that swims in our fishponds, rivers and sea endangering the health of consumers.

Recall that pinpointed as one of the sites of the mining activities of illegal miners is an abandoned tunnel of the Benguet Corporation that collapsed due to incessant rains dumped by powerful typhoon “Ompong”.

A  few weeks ago, we saw a report online that a tailing pond was washed out  due to heavy monsoon rains, and the sediment that it impounded cascaded to the Sangilo River,  which is connected to the Agno River whose water is impounded at San Roque dam reservoir in San Manuel town.

San Roque has since released water downstream, carrying  with it the sediments as well as lethal substances used by miners in enhancing their mining activities.

We don’t know the amount of sediments produced by illegal mining activities in Benguet that got into the Ampucao watershed between Tuba and Itogon, Benguet. For sure, these sediments increased the siltation of the Sinocalan River as well as all rivers downstream, and could be the reason they are now shallow.

As we had previously discussed in our past Random Thoughts, Mt. Ampucao, the fountain head of our very own Sinocalan River, is already denuded due to unabated illegal mining which the DENR failed to check many years ago.

It was only after that mining disaster in Itogon as an aftermath of Typhoon “Ompong” when DENR moved to stop smale-scale illegal mining in the area. Nonetheless, we laud Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu for putting a stop to the travesty of nature that was going on in that side of the Cordillera mountain for many decades.

Cimatu’s action may be too late in coming, but it is better late than never.

Again, recall when former DENR Secretary Gina Lopez tried to craft a policy of total mining ban. The move struck the sensitivities of many of our lawmakers and caused her appointment to be rejected by the powerful Commission on Appointment.

We find her proposed policy truly one among the answers to rehabilitate our severely damaged environment, plus, of course, the need to dredge all waterways already heavily silted.

Hopefully, President Duterte is now studying the wisdom of enforcing a total mining ban after his dialogue with the town and provincial officials as well as the kin of the dead miners in Benguet.

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We were appalled by the flood in Baguio and some parts of Benguet and the erosion that buried some people in Itogon.

I once lived and worked in Baguio and never did I see entire Burnham Park up to the Athletic Bowl, Harrison Road and the lower Session Road engulfed by flood. Only the City Camp Lagoon was a perennial disaster area because of its location. 

When we were in Baguio 30 years ago, houses were already beginning to sprout like mushrooms on the slopes of the mountains. Today, these have since sprouted three times more. Pine trees, many of them decades old, were felled to give way to subdivisions and commercial establishments.

One time, while on solitude in our little room that gave us a bird’s eye view of the pine-clad mountaintops virtually kissing the afternoon clouds, where shanties already abound, we thought then that Baguio could be ripe for a disaster soon because almost every inch of the mountains was already occupied.

 And it did with the onslaught of Typhoon “Ompong”.

It was in Baguio, where we say we spent one of the best parts of our lives. It was there where we practiced journalism, after a few years of covering Pampanga. We had an office and quarters at Assumption Road.

That was why it pained my wife and I to see the city we loved subjected to heavy flooding which Baguio Mayor Mauricio Domogan said, was equivalent to one month of rain, similar to Dagupan’s recent experience during the July monsoon rains. 

Of course, Baguio is only our second city, next to Dagupan. 

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