BOAC, MARINDUQUE - The province's officials lauded a Supreme Court decision ordering a mining company to pay at least P36 million in taxes to the Marinduque provincial government.
In a decision by the SC?s third division, now retired Associate Justice Ma. Alicia Austria-Martinez said the Court of Appeals committed grave abuse of discretion when it ignored ?irrefutable evidence? when it ruled that Marcopper Mining Corp. was exempt from paying taxes for the use of land in Barangay Lamesa in Sta. Cruz town.
The SC ruled on a technicality over the use of the land. Marcopper had said it was used as site for machinery for pollution control. But the SC ruling said the land was used primarily for ?permanent improvement and therefore not tax exempt.?
Late justice
According to Alan Nepomuceno, environment committee chair of the provincial board, the SC ruling was welcome news that the people of Marinduque had been long waiting for.
?The decision restored our people?s confidence in our judicial system and we have great hopes that our other claims against Marcopper will be justly compensated,? Nepomuceno said.
?Justice may have come too late for the Marinduqueños but credit must still be given to those who fought the good fight with us,? Carmencita Reyes, Marinduque?s lone district representative, said.
Reyes, who was formerly the province?s governor, asked lawyer Harry Roque to assist her legal team, composed of then congressman Edmund Reyes and provincial fiscal Edgardo Balquedra, to convince the SC that the CA had erred in finding that the mining firm?s properties were tax exempt.
?We are praying that it is not an empty victory because Marcopper has ceased operations since 1996. All their assets have been either transferred to offshore holding companies or sold off to former partners,? Reyes added.
Nepomuceno, meanwhile, said he is hoping that the provincial government will use the P36 million to mitigate or rehabilitate the environmental damages that have been caused by the operation of the mining company.
Marcopper ceased mining operations in 1996 when the whole town of Boac was submerged in floodwaters and tailings brought about by a collapsed tunnel of the mining company?s Tapian Pit in March of the same year.
The spill was considered as the worst mining disaster in the country?s history, rendering the Boac River ?biologically dead.?
A report of the United States Geological Survey in 2003, meanwhile, identified the Makulapnit Dam of Marcopper to be in imminent danger of collapse while the Maguilaguila Siltation dam in the town of Mogpog is heavily eroded.
