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Sunday, September 03, 2006
Essay: A spill of a problem?
By Erma M. Cuizon
Sun.star Essay
The first time we heard of Guimaras was not as a tourist haven but as some lovely lonely island to where a friend went on horseback from the port across wooded trails to look for a relative living there.
And the natives were all fishermen who slept mornings and started out to the magic seas in the afternoon or early evening to move with the strong breeze.
Well, that was years ago. And we never got to visit that lonely place. And certainly not now with the oil spill.
The magic of the place is gone, at least in Guimaras’ coastal town of Nueva Valencia. A nunnery in a tale, which seemed like a dream in its quiet existence, is identified as the convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame, not of ancient fairies in white.
Guimaras is a small island province in Region 6 with five towns occupying a miniscule three percent of the region’s total land area. At this point in time, it’s an island province where, in a town, an oil spill has destroyed its beaches and fishermen are earning their keep not from selling poisoned fishes but from cleaning the beaches of the stinky oil.
It’s certainly a scare of a time for Guimaras islanders—the fishermen and tourist industry—even for the neighboring islands and provinces. A tanker carrying oil for Petron sank just off Guimaras with over two million liters of oil. Solar I is still in the seabed with 1.9 million liters of oil left in the tank as of press time, poised be released into the sea, if the tanker isn’t pulled out or its oil not pumped out safely.
Some days ago, environmentalist, Antonio Oposa sent out a message which scared Cebuanos living in the coasts facing west. And he got understandable reactions from officials in the said towns. Oposa and his environmentalist group unofficially issued a warning that the oil slick just off Guimaras would reach Bantayan in Cebu in 10 to 14 days. One statement became controversial, as far as some people of Bantayan and Madridejos were concerned: “manguros na lang ta ani.” Later, Oposa said that the oil slick was scattered off, especially with the changes of the sea current “The worst is over,” he said to Cebuanos.
But the lady mayors of Bantayan and Madridejos insisted they’d stay on guard, despite the update.
If we were prepared, like if the country had an official group watching over incidents like this, such as the spill and the danger it poses, then we would have had the information we could use. No single assessment is perfect but a group could gather all these estimates and come to a moment’s conclusion, until the next development.
In other words, it would be best to deal with problems in the country (such as what to do with the transport of dangerous cargo in our seas) not only without politics but without strong emotions we don’t need. You could see this aspect of the incident as very Filipino to whom nothing seems to work smoothly, someone is bound to point a blaming finger on someone else, or brushing it off, saying “Hey, not me!”
But perhaps the unprepared Filipino isn’t so far different from other nationals when caught in a disaster like this. On a national level, Spain did not have a preparedness plan for this kind of disaster when it happened just off Galicia.
The Prestige tanker passing by the coast broke in two and sank; it’s still leaking oil. The water is near-freezing so that the oil thickens and turns solid in no time. It’s leaking almost 80,000 liters of oil a day although a month ago it leaked about 125,000 liters a day. In total, it’s said to let out some 25 million liters of oil into the sea in hundreds of kilometers in the affected Spanish coastline.
If they haven’t taken the tanker out where it sank since a few years ago, what are our chances of taking out the vessel carrying Petron oil?
The coast off Mexico has had a lot to learn on oil spills, having had spills in 1957 where 2.7 million gallons of oil were released into the sea; also in 1967, when another tanker in trouble leaked out 500,000 barrels of oil spilled into the sea. And in 1990….
As for the bad news from Guimaras, should we say, Postpone the swimming, till then?
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (September 3, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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