APPARENTLY feeling the case against illegal squatters and claimants of foreshorelands in Bonuan are now sufficiently documented by the sangguniang panlungsod, City Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez has chosen to confront the main agency where the problem had started – the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Fernandez late last week asked DENR regional, provincial and city offices to cancel all the certificates they issued to numerous persons and entities attesting that certain portions of land near the Lingayen Gulf were “alienable” and “disposable”.

Thru a letter, the vice mayor took to task the DENR for unlawfully issuing thru its regional and field offices such certificates to persons or entities who used the same in securing Tax Declaration Certificates (TDC) from the City Assessors Office here.

Under the law, Fernandez said, TDCs are mere proofs of claims but not proofs of ownership. One is free to claim a piece of land but he’s not free to own it just like that, he explained.

Based on documents unearthed so far, the Certificates of Alienability and Disposability (CAD) were issued, some as far back as 10 years ago, to members of prominent families in Dagupan and Pangasinan.

Each of these were claiming supposed parcels of land, the smallest of which has an area of 600 square meters and the biggest at 12,000 square meters.

The vice mayor’s move, some officials said, becomes the first logical step towards stopping the massive land speculation activities in the Dagupan shoreline that had been going on for years under the very noses of park and city authorities .

More significantly, according to Fernandez, it willfortify the application for Miscellaneous Lease Agreement filed with DENR by the Dagupan City government now pending with the office of Environment Secretary Angelo Reyes

Fernandez maintained that the accreted land, formed throughout the years by sand and sediment being washed ashore from the Lingayen Gulf, is part of the public domain and therefore inalienable and disposable.

How come they were certified as alienable and disposable by some personnel of the DENR in the absence of any Presidential Proclamation or an act of Congress is for the DENR to answer,” Fernandez said.

There were initially 30 hectares of accreted lands in the shores of Bonuan in Dagupan and based on records compiled by the city council, there were already more than 25 hectares of land being claimed by different persons and entities.

Fernandez said based on a recent letter sent to him by Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Officer officer-in-charge Rogel Pimentel, there were from 34 to 38 CADs that his office had so far cancelled.

]But Fernandez said the number constitutes only a few of the certificates that DENR personnel had actually issued because based on the documents submitted to the city council here there were up to 98 claimants of parcels of accreted land based on their corresponding TDCs.

However, the area being claimed could be much more based on the letter-complaint filed in the office of Secretary Reyes sometime last year by Juanito Lagao, former administrator of the Tondaligan Park which is next to the accreted land. Lagao citedin his complaint some 150 TDCs.

Fernandez said that based on documents they have in their possession, it appears that all the claimants of the accreted area near the Lingayen Gulf wanted to convert the lands that they are claiming as location for their vacation houses.

Existing guidelines for alienable and disposable lands however stipulate that these can only be used for agricultural or orchard purposes and not as location for beach resorts. (PNA)