The President's SONA

President Aquino delivered his second SONA in a way that had majority of our people understand what his administration has accomplished during his first year as president. His message, and how it was delivered, was like a Reaganomics style of effective communication — a mixture of anecdotal parables and examples that an ordinary person, particularly the poor and little educated, are able to grasp.

Among the salient points he reported during the first year of his administration were fighting graft and corruption, creating thousands of new jobs over a short period of time, the prudent use of funds and creative financial management, an innovative fiscal approach that saved taxpayers P23 billion in the first four months of this year, attracting 140 companies to participate in the exploration and strengthening of oil and natural gas resources, stopping over-importing of rice, and providing housing for the police and armed forces.

It’s good that the President defended our right over the Spratlys, praised the enforcement of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, urged the ending of the culture of negativism, and asking us to show courtesy and respect for our elders, teachers, and police.

I felt disappointed that he made no mention of the progress or status of the Mindanao peace process, particularly the Philippine-MILF peace talks. The conflict in Mindanao is one of the most serious problems that the country has today, and will be facing in the future if this conflict is not resolved. An early conclusion of a comprehensive Philippine-MILF peace agreement will be a milestone and crowning accomplishment of the administration.

The SONA reported nothing about the Reproductive Health bill. But why? I looked forward to his report on this crucial bill. It mentioned an understanding of cooperation between the office of the President and the Catholic bishops. What did he mean?

* * *

July 21 last week was the first year anniversary of the time when gas fumes and a perceived danger of a gas-linked explosion forced residents of West Tower, a condominium building in barangay Bangkal, Makati, to leave their units and their belongings. Experts later traced the presence of the gas in the condominium’s basement, to leaks in a 44-year-old pipeline owned and operated by the First Philippine Industrial Corp. (FPIC).

Through the 117-kilometer long pipeline, fuel, kerosene, aviation gas, liquefied petroleum gas and bunker oil are transported from the refineries in Batangas of FPIC’s clients Shell and Caltex to their oil deposits in Pandacan, Manila.

In June last year, West Tower residents began to smell gas fumes emanating from the 22-story building’s basement. Because of this, their lives have been drastically altered. One can just imagine the experience of suddenly being homeless and faced with the problem of relocating, incurring extra expense, losing whatever you had invested and spent for the condominium unit, and the uncertainty of when your life will return to normal.

FPIC president and COO Anthony Mabasa said in an interview that some 9,000 drums or 1.8 million liters of fuel have been determined to leak from the pipeline, which is still within the allowable level of loss. Before it was shut down the pipeline transported some 10 million liters of fuel a day.

FPIC first received a call on July 12, 2010, about oil-water mixture seeping through the wall of West Tower’s basement 2. FPIC immediately dug several excavations, then a 42-meter-long trench, but tests showed negative results. After several months of digging and testing for oil spillage, on November 7, the leaking segment was found. A significant observation was the Magallanes flyover’s retaining wall footing unusually resting on the pipeline’s concrete casing, which could be a cause of the leak due to the load from the massive infrastructure and the overloaded vehicles.

On Nov. 10, the leaking segment was repaired. In January 2011, the pipeline remained shut down in compliance with the Writ of Kalikasan issued by the Supreme Court, which also ordered an integrity check of the pipeline.

On April 15 Supreme Court Associate Justice Presbitero Velasco led the  ocular inspection of two excavations reported by WTHA to have leaks, but found no leaks nor signs of corrosion. The FPIC is now ready to conduct a leak test of the entire pipeline segment as part of the integrity check ordered by the Supreme Court in the Writ of Kalikasan.

Towards the end of May, FPIC had the building’s common areas powered up, and pass fire safety inspection. Housekeeping and maintenance personnel have been recalled, the elevators are up and running, and the pilot sealing and wall reinforcements made. Maynilad resumed operations, and common areas cleared.

FPIC president and COO Anthony Mabasa said, “FPIC chooses to just let our actions do the talking. As far as the company is concerned, we will do whatever is needed to get the residents back to their homes with the least delays. This is a commitment, not only to those who believed in us right at the outset, but also to those who did not.” Residents can go back to their units by the end of this year, Mabasa added.

Even without any court finding on its liability, FPIC offered financial relocation assistance to the residents. Twenty accepted the offer of P600,000 each. The rest sued FPIC P2.014 billion plus 10 percent attorney’s fees. The demands, the respondents claim, are “mind-boggling.” In contrast, a more premiere condominium building in Salcedo Village was advertising a rate of P37,000 per sq.m. Plus, the PFIC’s pipeline, its source of revenues, has yet to resume operation after almost nine months of being shut down, and it would have to spend on environmental remediation of the affected areas in Bangkal.

Says WTHA president Bobby Dimayuga: “During our group’s initial discussions with FPIC, all we asked for was help in temporarily relocating us to housing establishments owned or managed by the Lopez group. We did not ask for space larger than what we had at West Tower. There was absolutely no mention of financial considerations or damages. But when they started making us out to be extortionists who merely want to make financial gain from this tragedy, we decided to take the legal route for the company to assume full responsibility for what happened.”

The incident has caught the attention of the Senate in January this year, which concluded that environmental degradation was inflicted on the condominium and its immediate vicinity, and that residents should be fully compensated, and the land remediated by extricating the spilled fuel and cleaning the soil that has been polluted.

FPIC claims it will take some three to five years to complete remediation work. Independent experts say this is a tedious process that will require at least 10 years considering that the soil lies underneath solid structures (the condominium and the houses in Bangkal). To date, say WTHA, not even 30 percent of an estimated 1.8 million to 3 million liters of fuel floating underneath Barangay Bangkal has been extracted since November 2010.

It falls on Makati Regional Trial Court Judge Eugene Paras to decide if the West Tower case is simply a civil case or a broader environmental case.

* * *

My e-mail: [email protected]