Mabalacat coal plant under fire

MABALACAT, Pampanga —People’s organizations have started a signature drive and slated more rallies to protest the construction of a coal plant in Barangay Bundagul here.

The organizations, led by the Pagkakaisa ng Kababaihan para sa Inang Bayan (Kaisa Ka) kicked off a public information and protest campaign against the proposed TIPCO coal plant during rallies held over the weekend at the Madapdap and Sta. Lucia resettlements for lahar victims in this town.

In a statement, Kaisa Ka pointed out the coal plant project would only worsen the plight of local folk already feeling the effects of contamination from toxic wastes left behind by the US Air Force at Clark Field.

This developed as Sen. Loren Legarda said that toxic waste contamination at Clark has already been "validated" and that clean-up of the wastes, and not further studies on them, is what is needed.

In an interview in San Fernando City last Saturday, Legarda expressed appreciation for the proposal of US Rep. Robert Underwood (Guam) for the US government to face up to its responsibilities over the contamination of its former bases in the Philippines, but she stressed that "technical knowhow and actual clean-up" are now called for.

Kaisa Ka said that assurances of safety of such projects as the TIPCO coal plant is "meaningless," pointing out the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) "has virtually no capacity to monitor facilities for emissions on a continuous basis."

Kaisa Ka said that "despite the enormous amount of resources that have been spent in packaging and repackaging coal-based energy production, the global coal industry has been largely unsuccessful in erasing the stigma of widespread lung disease and other serious health problems and severely degraded environments." — Ding Cervantes