WINDOWS
Gabriel L. Cardinoza

After three months, the provincial government is finally taking a decisive action against the owner of the barge that spilled some 300 metric tons of coal in the waters off the coastal village of Macaboboni in Agno town.

Last Friday, provincial administrator Virgilio Solis has given the Malabon-based Asian Shipping Lines ten days to remove its 900-foot landing craft transport Aisner from the area or face legal action.

The barge was on its way to the Philippine National Oil Company in San Fernando City, La Union from Semirara, Antique to deliver 4,500 metric tons of coal when strong waves forced it to a coralline area of the Agno Bay and got stuck there.

If Macaboboni sounds familiar to you, it is because this fishing village facing the South China Sea was the proposed site of a controversial cement plant that a Taiwanese-led consortium called Goldsun had wanted to build in 1997. The proposed cement plant was, of course, vigorously opposed by residents and environmental groups at that time, saying among others, that the cement plant, once operational, will destroy the bay and drive away the fishes, depriving the people of their main source of livelihood.

But despite the opposition, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources gave the green light for the project by issuing an environmental compliance certificate (ECC). The project, however, was mothballed because Goldsun apparently failed to comply with the 55 conditions listed in the ECC within a given time frame.

Why the provincial government waited three months before threatening the ship owner with a class suit is beyond us. We also continue to wonder why the Agno municipal government has not taken any concrete action against the Asian Shipping Line when clearly its ditched barge has already wrecked havoc to the precious marine environment of the bay.

Apparently, the ship owner had exerted effort to tow the barge and even attempted to transfer its cargo to other ships. But high waves have prevented them. Meanwhile, coal of varying irregular sizes continues to spill out from the ship and according to reports, it has covered a length of 80 meters of the waters along the cove shoreline. And all the DENR can do is to helplessly watch it.

With the provincial government ultimatum, we hope the grounded ship will be finally moved out of the area. But will it? To my mind, if the ship owner had tried to extricate the barge from the corals in the last three months and failed, will Solis’ ultimatum make any difference?

And if and when the ship is finally towed away, will the provincial government abandon its threat of filing a class suit against the ship owner? From the DENR report that the barge destroyed a seaweeds farm in the area and obviously, the corals, the provincial government (or whoever should do this) should have immediately filed a case as soon as the report on the ship’s ditching was received and initiated steps to ensure the protection of the marine environment in the area.

But then again, we waited three months. And we have not even started any clean up activity yet. This simply shows that when an environmental accident such as this coal spill takes place, we are not sure about what we should do next. We are not simply ready for it.

Our only consolation is that the ship did not go belly up and spilled all its cargo to the open sea. Otherwise, we might just find ourselves in the shore helplessly crying not over spilled milk, but over a spilled coal.