MANILA – An agreement with a huge state-run freeport zone regarding environmental permits and clearances has been cancelled due to the alleged failure of its officials to stop the unabated destruction of trees, a ranking government official disclosed Secretary Lito Atienza of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources said the agreement with the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) was signed on January 17, 2006.
The agreement, Atienza said, deputized SBMA officials to issue environmental permits and clearances to businesses that would operate within the freeport, located at the former sprawling American naval installation in Subic Bay, Olongapo City, Zambales province in Central Luzon.
In a letter, Atienza said he informed Armand Arreza, the SBMA administrator, he decided to revoke the agreement because of SBMA’s continued failure to comply with its terms on the issuance of environmental permits.
In particular, Atienza cited the storm of protests that greeted the plan to cut down more than 300 mature trees inside the freeport to give way to a hotel-casino project of a South Korea-based company.
According to Atienza, his department is accountable to the people for the protection of the environment and Subic is no exception despite the vital role it plays in the country’s economic development.
As a result, he said he decided to have his department take direct control of Subic instead of allowing the SBMA to have sole authority over the implementation of the country’s environmental laws inside the freeport.
For instance, Atienza cited the failure of the SBMA to provide his department a program for the issuance of environmental clearance certificates (ECCs) to the so-called Subic locators, which are mostly foreign-owned, since the signing of the agreement in 2006.
He emphasized that despite the agreement, the SBMA appears to have exceeded its authority by not coordinating with his department in the issuance of permits to cut trees inside the freeport.
“We cannot allow the SBMA to continue to remain blind of the fact that the environmental stability of this all-important economic zone depends on the continued existence of trees,†he stressed.
In late 2008, environmentalists assailed the Korean-owned firm, Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction Corporation, for cutting down trees on an islet it has leased to construct a shipbuilding facility.
Also in 2008, another Korean company building a $120 million hotel-casino in Subic came under heavy fire after environmentalists exposed its plan to cut down more than 300 mature trees.
The trees in these two cases were part of the areas in the former US naval facility which are considered as “old growth forests,†environmentalists said.
The denunciations came after repeated assurances from SBMA officials that not a single tree would not be cut down.
But Atienza disclosed that a team of environmentalists hired by his department to undertake a survey reported that at least 161 trees may have to be cut because they showed signs of disease. Fears are that the Korean company allegedly “poisoned†the trees, which were earlier found to be “healthy,†in order to hasten their destruction.
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