BAGUIO CITY—A Catholic bishop has asked a court to place Mount Polis at the boundary of Ifugao and Mountain Province under a permanent environmental protection order, saying this upland watershed is being ravaged by illegal quarrying.
Bishop Valentin Dimoc, the apostolic vicar of the vicariate of Bontoc-Lagawe, also urged the Ifugao Regional Trial Court (RTC) to compel government agencies and the local governments of Banaue in Ifugao and of Bontoc in Mountain Province to stop all quarry operations that have been devastating the mountain’s mossy forest.
Mt. Polis straddles Ifugao and Mountain Province, and is part of the central Cordillera forest reserve, which includes Mt. Pulag, according to government records.
Because of their elevation, these mountains host some of the remaining mossy forests in the country, Dimoc’s complaint said.
Unabated quarrying
Lawyer Francesca Macliing-Claver, Dimoc’s counsel, on Nov. 4 petitioned the Ifugao RTC in Banaue for a writ of continuing mandamus and a protection order, saying unabated quarrying operations along a 4.5-kilometer stretch of the Bontoc-Banaue Road have destroyed the mountain slopes.
The petition attributed the destruction to five unlicensed operators, as established by a recent police report, although Claver said there might be operations that had not been documented.
The complaint said some quarry operators cited disasters, like landslides, as an excuse to mine scarred mountain slopes, usually by offering to clear areas of toppled boulders and eroded soil for free.
Fay Apil, Cordillera regional director of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, said her agency had issued cease orders there because the quarry operations along the road had destabilized the mountain.
Apil, who was among the officials sued by Dimoc, said the agency’s directives were all ignored.
Claver cited studies and government evaluations, dating back to 2001, to establish that the illegal quarry operations have not gone unnoticed.
Citing a 2003 report, Claver said several meetings underscored the dangers posed by tree cutting, quarrying and vegetable gardening in Mt. Polis.
Communities in Banaue and Bontoc near the quarry sites, also issued a resolution to rehabilitate the quarried areas.
Nothing much has changed since then, the complaint said, because “rocks and boulders are intentionally chipped off the mountain to feed a lucrative quarry business.”
“The public respondents may argue that [they issued] cease-and-desist orders to try and put a stop to the illegal quarrying … . The fact, however, is such destructive activities have gone on without let up,” it said.
“If quarrying in the past was [pursued using] simple [equipment] such as piko (pick axe) and pala (shovel), [the operations] have become an industry in itself with the massive use of heavy equipment such as backhoes and large trucks,” Dimoc said.
“What used to be an activity to supply domestic house building [has] turned into a rock and gravel industry to fuel road and highway construction—all to the detriment of the Mt. Polis forest cover and watershed,” the complaint said.
The quarry operations also help illegal farmers because these trigger erosion, which clear forest land that is converted into gardens, the complaint said.
It cited a 2003 Ifugao provincial assessor’s report that the Banaue government had issued certificates of tax declaration to 62 land claimants in Mt. Polis.
Writ of kalikasan
Claver was also the lawyer of Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas and Baguio-Benguet Bishop Carlito Cenzon, who sued for a writ of kalikasan over Mt. Santo Tomas, which the Supreme Court had granted in September last year.
The Mt. Santo Tomas forest was damaged by an illegal road construction attributed to a Baguio official that affected a valuable water source for Baguio City and Tuba town in Benguet.
It has been granted a permanent environmental protection order by the Court of Appeals.
On Oct. 26, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) approved the forest land-use plan of Tuba, which includes the Sto. Tomas reservation.
An Oct. 26 memorandum of agreement showed that the DENR’s initial act to fulfill the court’s ruling was to allow the construction of a building to house a team that would guard the forest, delineate the forest boundaries and inventory illegal forest settlements.
On Friday, Deputy Ombudsman Gerard Mosquera said his office was evaluating the complaint filed against the official.