Coastline

When urban planner Daniel Hudson Burnham sailed into Manila Bay over a century ago, he was overwhelmed by what he would later describe as the most beautiful coastline in the world.

The secure bay, with its deep harbor, was lined with white sand beaches. Manila, with its grand fortress, sat straight across from the mouth of the bay. Communities fished in the abundant waters. Prosperous settlements lined the bay from Cavite to Bataan.

The bay gleamed magically each day as the sun set, directly west across the waters from the city. This was the most beautiful sunset in the world.

The sight that so took Burnham we will never again see. The white sand beaches are long gone. The waters are filthy and the bay is now a health hazard.

There is not much of the bay left, in fact. The old beach resorts in Parañaque have been reclaimed. Cavitex now runs along the former coastline once dotted with fishing communities. To the north, the land has been reclaimed to accommodate expanded port facilities. Further up, informal settlers have built a mass of shanties over the water. Illegal fish pens colonized large parts of the bay.

Roxas Boulevard is itself built on land reclaimed from the bay. Nevertheless, it is the last open coastline in that part of the bay. Efforts were exerted by previous city administrations to retain the charm of an open coastline. A long pedestrian area was developed and, for a while, those parts of Malate and Ermita fronting the bay seemed on the way to regaining its old status as an entertainment and recreational district.

Even that short strip of open coastline in now threatened.

Exactly a year ago, almost surreptitiously, the city council of Manila passed Ordinance 8233, authorizing the city mayor to file an application with the Philippine Reclamation Authority to reclaim certain portions of Manila Bay. The new decree overturns Ordinance 7777, passed by the council in 1993, banning any form of reclamation in the stretch from the Cultural Center complex to the US Embassy.

The new ordinance is strange in many ways.

To begin with, Ordinance 8233 was passed with none of the requisite public consultations being held. All the businesses thriving on the current bay front will be adversely affected. Ordinary citizens who enjoy the recreational facilities on the open walk along the bay will lose their space.

The ordinance was passed without consultations with the DENR. Any reclamation could throw existing flood control facilities haywire, trap water in the built-up potions of the city and produce every sort of environmental havoc. This ordinance was passed without the benefit of scientific and engineering studies that prescribe the nature of the reclamation.

Strangely, the new (and secretive) ordinance does not specify the area to be covered by the intended reclamation, saying only that it begins from the city’s boundary with Pasay. Nor does the ordinance specify what purposes will be served by the intended reclamation. It basically hands the Manila mayor a blank check to negotiate a deal for the reclamation of the area.

There is grave danger in the absence of specification on the nature of the reclamation. The area fronting the bay is, no doubt, premium real estate. Without specifications on the use of the reclaimed land, the door is opened to all sorts of shady deals that will produce billions in profit even as it disadvantages the residents of the city.

We saw what happened to the reclamation projects in Pasay and Paranaque. The existing communities were pushed to the interior, condemned to urban blight. Whatever the local governments profited from the reclamation deals did not result in improved service to their constituents.

Without the best engineering studies, reclamation projects can result in disaster. The Cultural Center complex, it is said, is sinking into the sea because of inadequate piling of the seabed. The Dagat-dagatan project, where a natural catch basin was filled in, produced the perennial flooding of the entire Camanava area.

The most important question is this: Who intends to profit from this reclamation proposal, causing such a crude and unspecified ordinance to be passed in the least transparent way?

The word going around is that the proposal to reclaim the part of the bay indicated in the ordinance was made many years ago by a consortium called Gold Coast. Who is behind this consortium?

Manila Vice-mayor Francisco Domagoso (aka Isko Moreno) chaired the city council that passed this curious ordinance. We should like to hear from him about the context and the considerations surrounding this curious ordinance.

This ordinance could have serious repercussions not only on the actual residents of the city. Why was it passed without public consultations?

What is the DENR’s position on this curious ordinance? How will reclamation jive with all the other efforts to clear the bay, improve its water quality and make drainage from the city’s many esteros more feasible? Is an environmental clearance certificate required for any reclamation project?

And what about all the environmental activist groups that gave the cleanup of the Pasig River and the bay the priority it deserves to be. Nothing has been heard from these groups — even after this year-old ordinance has finally been made public.

We hope there is no conspiracy of silence surrounding what could possibly be a mega real estate deal in the country’s prime tourist and recreational district. So far, however, only former Manila mayor and DENR secretary Lito Atienza has come forward to denounce this bizarre ordinance that will take out what is left of the city’s coastline.