Stakeholders in the dark

Local government planners should consider involving ecology groups whenever they start major projects like land reclamation.

Then again, it may be late in the game for the Cordova Reclamation Project, which started smothering foreshore land and tidal flats of the fishing town.

In a stakeholders forum in Cebu City, a sea grass expert, sociologist and ecology activists voiced concern that the massive earth moving and dumping of filling materials would damage the marine ecosystem and cut off the livelihood of small-scale fishermen.

The legal firepower is coming from Gloria Estenzo Ramos, founder of the Philippine Earth Justice Center, who found out last December that the project does not have the approval of the Philippine Estate Authority.

What was first thought of as Cordova town mayor Adelino Sitoy’s inspired idea to build a “mini-Boracay” in Mactan has found another owner.

He said yesterday that it’s the Provincial Capitol’s project, not his.

But it is his town’s poverty that the mayor is invoking as the rationale for the ambitious landscaping of Cordova’s rocky foreshore land.

In the same campus forum, he explained that the project, which starts with 10 hectares for a roll-on, roll-off port and amenities, was the key to liberating his third-class municipality from poverty.

It’s way late in the game to ask, but who asked the stakeholders?

Who told fisherfolk that mangroves would be covered up, killing the sea nurseries of fish? Or that their bancas would lose access to the sea?

Who asked marine scientists or businessmen what would be the impact of reclaiming 132 hectares on fisheries, pollution, sea navigation lanes?

The vision of creating a 120-hectare artificial white sand beach in Mactan wasn’t discussed in the Provincial Board.

Who asked the tourism industry or world-class resorts on Mactan whether this would make it “more fun” in the Philippines—and whether more tourists would come to enjoy a fake beach?

The project wasn’t taken up in the Regional Development Council. Who asked whether this was a strategic gain for Central Visayas?

For a project this scale being implemented under the radar, the public needs to know more facts other than an inauguration of a ro-ro port and an “EGwen Avenue.”

The Capitol still has unresolved issues with the Ombudsman about buying a P98.9-million coastal Balili estate that was largely underwater, now being refashioned into a coal ash dump site for a Korean power plant.

Who would have thought it would embark on another real estate venture turning water into land?