Nickel mining turned Zambales river the color of blood

STA. CRUZ, ZAMBALES – For nearly two years now, Leonardo Lustria Jr., manager of the Sta. Cruz water district, has been at his wit’s end trying to find ways to protect the town’s watershed, which feeds Sta. Cruz’s two irrigation systems and provides local folk with potable water.

“They’re mining the watershed!" he laments.

“We have a waterfall up there," says Lustria. “We have more Mindoro pines there than in Mindoro, and pitcher plants that are among the biggest in the country."

Some 20 kms from the town proper, the Sta. Cruz watershed was also reforested more than a decade ago through an P18.1-million loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) project, which called for the planting of mahogany, acacia, agoho, eucalyptus, and other types of trees, was carried out from 1994 to 1999.

In total, the national government borrowed P27.5 million from the ADB to reforest five areas in Zambales. The biggest reforestation site – 1,000 hectares or 67 percent of the total – was at the Sta. Cruz watershed. Today, all five reforested areas are being mined. Randolph Mirador, who headed the people’s organization that planted trees in Sta. Cruz under the ADB program, can only say with a sigh, “Talagang nakasasama ng loob (It’s really heartbreaking)."

In her 2008 State of the Nation Address, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo dedicated a few lines to mining, asking business and civil society to "continue to work for a socially equitable, economically viable balance of interests."

"Mining companies," she said, “should ensure that host communities benefit substantively from their investments, and with no environmental damage from operations."

Arroyo also outlined her plan to set aside P2 billion for reforestation in 2009, saying the forests mitigate the effects of the increasing frequency and intensity of typhoons brought on by climate change.

Mining + flooding

Here in Zambales, officials and ordinary folk alike are still debating the financial benefits of mining. But there seems to be little question among most of them that the surge in this province’s version of “small-scale mining" in the last two years has brought with it fast-rising floods during heavy rains, and even a decline in the output of several farms.

This has threatened Sta. Cruz’s reputation as the province’s rice granary. In Barangay Guisguis, a group of women surveying a nearby river and a swathe of ricefields after an afternoon downpour take in an eerie scene that only fortifies the fear they now feel whenever the rains come: blood-colored water rushing down from upstream, breaching riverbanks in some places, the murky water inundating ricefields.

“When there was no mining, the river was deep enough to take in the rainwater," comments one of the women. “Now the river overflows and the water goes directly to our ricefields."

Just recently, Sta. Cruz was among those hardest hit by Typhoon "Kiko," which saw a state of calamity being declared in the whole of Zambales. Early last year, Guisguis was also among the areas on which Typhoon "Cosme" had the worst impact. Residents had to wade through waist-high floodwaters in darkness at the height of the typhoon, with several families seeking refuge at a local daycare center.

Guisguis residents concede that they have had floods before. But they say that these days, the waters rise too quickly. Says one resident: “The soil was parched and 'Cosme' brought just a little rain, which can only mean that the mountain is now absorbing less."

In fact, aside from scraping the forest cover and operating in the watershed, some miners here have also bulldozed their way through plots covered by the DENR’s Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM).

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/170240/Nickel-mining-turned-Zambales-river-the-color-of-blood