DENR takes custody of logs cut from wind farm site

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—The dispute over the custody of logs cut from a solar and wind farm site in this free port has been settled.

On Jan. 8, the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) allowed the power project developer to transport out of the port 50 logs that the SBMA Law Enforcement Department (LED) seized on Dec. 28, its chair, Roberto Garcia, said on Monday.

The logs remain SBMA property even while these are kept in the Olongapo City office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Garcia said.

Earlier, the logs were secured at the LED compound because the truck hired by the firm, Jobin-SQM Inc., could not show a transport permit. Jobin-SQM Inc. is building a $200-million renewable energy facility inside an 800-hectare Aeta ancestral domain in the area that would produce 150 megawatts of combined solar and wind energy.

The developer had obtained permits to cut the trees and transport the logs out of the port from the Central Luzon office in Pampanga province.

In a letter to the SBMA Ecology Center, Marife Castillo, Olongapo community environment and natural resources officer, asked the SBMA to release the logs to the DENR instead for safekeeping.

At a press briefing here, Garcia said: “I told Castillo that everything inside the free port is the property of the SBMA. In the past administrations, trees that were cut here were transported out of the free port but that should not happen anymore.”

“I insisted that the SBMA become the primary beneficiary of the logs because these came from us. We will let the Aeta people inside the free port use the logs,” he added.

In a text message, Castillo said Jobin-SQM Inc. had turned over the logs to the DENR “in compliance with the conditions of the permit to cut.”

“The logs are now under the DENR’s custody, physically and legally… . I haven’t received a written request from the SBMA to date [as to how these would be disposed],” she said.

Garcia said his office was drafting a memorandum of agreement to ask the DENR to turn over the logs to the SBMA.