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Thursday, August 24, 2006
Editorial: Oil spill
MOST of the national attention focused on the ongoing recovery efforts off Guimaras coast where a sunken oil tanker is spilling more of its oil into the waters and already killing scores of marine life and severely damaging the marine ecosystem there.
What makes this tragedy doubly painful is the fact that the national government is already being stretched thin with its recovery of overseas contract workers in Lebanon-which thankfully is being reduced significantly by the day--and the ongoing evacuation for residents near the Mt. Mayon vicinity.
While the number of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) keep going down in Lebanon and Mt. Mayon had yet to fully launch its own explosion there in Guimaras, frogmen and rescue teams are hard at work though seeing little success in their operations in Guimaras.
Last time we heard, the oil spill is spreading to nearby areas with at least six towns in Iloilo province under threat from the oil spill.
Already it ruined 300 kilometers of coastline, 500 hectares of mangroves and 60 hectares of seaweed plantations affecting 26,000 residents of Guimaras.
Though there may be a solution in the horizon as a Belgium company promised to send robotic equipment to help recover the oil spill and take photographs of the damaged vessel that sank to the bottom of the sea due to bad weather.
This brings us the question of the laxity of the companies involved in transporting their precious cargo-in fact the validity of their decision to send the vessel off in the first place despite bad weather.
This incident reminds us of that famous Exxon Valdez oil spill incident back in 1989 in which millions of dollars worth of oil were spilled into the sea, causing considerable damage and raising awareness about environmental degradation by major industrial firms.
The Guimaras oil spill had again brought into the forefront the environmental group Greenpeace, which for years questioned the safety practices of oil firms in transporting their cargo overseas.
Though the oil spill doesn't directly affect Mindanao one must remember that the vessel, which caused the oil spill came from the Zamboanga peninsula and thus Mindanaoans are in a way linked to the incident even if it was remote.
Oil firms and the companies manning these tankers should learn from this incident to enforce more security and safety measures and to delay their shipments if necessary in order to avoid another major ecological disaster from happening.
The Guimaras oil spill only proves the tired old cliche‚ of "haste makes waste." In their rush to meet the delivery date the oil firm Petron and the shipping firm only succeeding in causing a major ecological nightmare.
Sanctions should be imposed on these firms, which ultimately bare the responsibility for this tragedy. We couldn't even begin to discuss how the national government should plan to go about this.
Suffice it to say that coordination between the lead agencies like the Departments of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Energy (DOE) and Interior and Local Governments (DILG) and the private sector groups should be of utmost priority in dealing with situations like these.
(August 24, 2006 issue)
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