Codilla stops LIDE from extracting water

ORMOC CITY, Philippines  – The city government the other day finally served the cease and desist order to the LIDE Management Corporation (LMC), closing down the firm’s water extraction operations at its pumping station in Brgy. Salvacion in this city.

Mayor Eric Codilla, accompanied by Vice Mayor Nepomuceno Aparis and some councilors, read and handed over the order addressed to Eddie Agustin, general manager of LMC.

LMC operations in-charge Mardenio Tapang received the order in behalf of Agustin, who was reportedly in Manila at the time.

Codilla earlier announced this move during his recent SOCA, saying that it was not for the money but for the city’s environment protection.

The LMC has been extracting water from the city and supplying this to the Philippine Phosphate Fertilizer Corp (PhilPhos) and the Philippine Associated Smelting and Refining Corp (PASAR)—both located in Isabel, Leyte—to Merida and Isabel towns and eight barangays in Ormoc.

The company’s water source is located in Brgys. Sto. Niño and Salvacion of Ormoc, using eight pumping machines and extracting an average of 20,000 cubic meters of water daily.

The mayor said he feared that LIDE’s more than 30 years of water extraction might cause sinkholes, collapse of the ground surface and salt intrusion to the city’s water tables. He said these catastrophic possibilities could happen and he does not want to be blamed in the future.

Codilla showed the public simulations of the dangers of LMC’s operations, saying he was stopping these “for a cause, not for applause.” He declared: “Way laing mutabang sa Ormoc kun dili kitang taga-Ormoc lamang.”

The mayor also admitted that the order was due to LMC’s refusal to pay regulatory taxes the city imposed under Ordinance No. 149, approved in 2008, imposing regulatory fees on all kinds of water extraction in the city.

LMC was billed under such ordinance, and the city has been trying to collect from the firm more than P 80-million in tax dues for the past four years.

Executives of the LMC and PASAR last Feb. 24 wrote Codilla telling the mayor that they were left with no choice but to accept his decision.

Other officials of these companies, and those from the National Development Corp. had tried to negotiate for reconsideration with the mayor’s decision, but after getting the “final demand” from the city government, they said talks were no longer necessary.

LMC manager Ed Agustin earlier told The Freeman the firm received the final ‘pay-up-or-stop-shop’ notice from city legal counsel Augustine Vestil Jr. He however clarified that LMC wrote the mayor to reiterate its stand that it could not pay the regulatory taxes based on the 2008 ordinance, which validity the firm had questioned in a case that is currently pending at the Court of Appeals.

LMC’s contention: Water, as a national wealth, remains at the hands of the national water regulatory board, and the ordinance has no legal basis to collect taxes from the LMC. “It is not that we don’t want to pay,” but until the court has resolved the validity of the ordinance the firm could not yet comply with the tax collection, Agustin said.

Agustin however said he understood the mayor’s sentiments, even as the closure would directly affect residents and the two big factories in Isabel.  (FREEMAN)