Another road project assailed

ROAD PROJECT A 1.2-kilometer canal intended as a flood-control measure by the Department of Public Works and Highways cost 30 to 40 trees along the Aguinaldo Highway in Barangay Silang Crossing, Tagaytay City. CLIFFORD NUÑEZ/CONTRIBUTOR

TAGAYTAY CITY—Still another road project of the national government, which resulted in the cutting of trees, proceeded here without clearance from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

According to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), 30 to 40 trees of asserted species were toppled in May to give way to the P10-billion line canal that stretches 1.2 kilometers along Aguinaldo Highway in Barangay (village) Silang Crossing in this city.

The number of trees cut, among them ipil, narra, mahogany and pine species, was “only half” of the 83 trees originally included in an inventory made by the DPWH, district engineer Eric Ayapana said.

As of June 27, the road project was deemed 90-percent complete. Its implementing agency, the DPWH-Cavite district, has been laying culverts and concrete pipes since Feb. 14 to ease sudden flooding on the major thoroughfare.

The trees were felled even without clearance from provincial and regional offices of the DENR. “The only permit approved so far was for a project in Carmona (another Cavite town),” said Rolinio Pozas, provincial environment officer.

However, the project engineer, Noel Perey, said the agency was authorized by the city government of Tagaytay, through an ordinance in February, to proceed with the infrastructure project. The felled trees, he said, stood on the government’s right of way.

“We could still have them charged,” Pozas said, pointing out that only the DENR could allow the cutting of trees. Last week, he ordered foresters to look into the road project.

The tree cutting in Cavite is the latest of similar cases that have alarmed civil society and environmental groups.

“Thousands of decades-old trees had been massacred as a sacrifice for infrastructure projects in Pangasinan, Laguna, Sorsogon, Baguio, Cebu and other parts of the country,” the Civil Society Advisory Council (CSAC) Philippines said in a manifesto issued on Wednesday.

The CSAC, a group of 15 organizations elected from members of the United Nations Civil Society Assembly, said the infrastructure projects lacked public consultations prior to the issuance of tree-cutting permits, if there were any.

In July 2012, Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa wrote a memorandum addressed to Environment Secretary Ramon Paje requesting the approval of the tree cutting and earth balling relative to the projects of the Department of Energy, DPWH, Isabela provincial government and Baguio City. A copy was furnished the Inquirer by the CSAC last week.

The group said Ochoa’s “blanket approval” of the tree cutting “undermined” the national moratorium on cutting of timber in natural and residual forests and the creation of the Anti-Illegal Logging Task Force by President Aquino.