A project likely to be a costly stillborn white elephant

One bad trait among Filipinos is to hijack a good idea to its saturation and unproductive point. Somebody introduced the cellphone to the Philippines and Filipinos wanted not just one but two, three etc. To feed the frenzy, cellphone stores spread like a virus until there was a pandemic of sellers, more than there were buyers. Now sellers accost any human being they see, almost begging to just even be heard. Of course, they are ignored.

That is the small example of it. But saturating the market also happens to the huge and humongous. Some people, like the officials of Consolacion, think land acquired by reclamation can be sold like peanuts at just about any street corner. And so, in partnership with a consortium, they embarked on an ambitious, multi-billion 200-hectare-plus reclamation, seemingly without regard for the consequences, much less even just a quick look-around.

Had they bothered, they would have seen that Cebu already had two huge reclamation projects, the north reclamation of the 1960s, and the south reclamation of the 1990s. Mandaue City had its own to connect the north reclamation to that city's central seafront. Clearly the point would be reached when there would be a surfeit of available land. And so it is. Cebu City alone reports close to 50 hectares of idle land at its south reclamation.

Despite the aforementioned reclamations already serving the four adjoining highly-urbanized cities of Cebu, Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu, and Talisay, there are still available lots not taken. That is why, for Nathaniel Chua, former president of the Cebu South Realtors Board-Philippine Association of Realtors Board, it is premature for Consolacion to pursue a reclamation project given the zero to little need for more land in the next 20 or 30 years.

There is a seeming lack of foresight and appreciation of the market forces at play in Consolacion's haste to undertake this project. So dogged is the pursuit that experts warn of the possibility that the application process may have been rushed. Vigilance is advised against corners being cut. While it normally takes nearly 10 years to process permits, Consolacion incredibly completed documentation in only a very short time.

Chua says public scoping and community consultations alone take so much time before any Environmental Compliance Certificate can be issued. Any project that poses potential environmental risk or impact such as the Consolacion reclamation is required to secure an ECC from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Environmental Management Board. It is not clear if an ECC has already been issued for the project.

Chua also says the north and south reclamations have been unable to solve Metro Cebu's traffic woes, so Consolacion cannot use the same problem as part of the excuse to undertake one more reclamation project. A reclamation project does not answer traffic woes. It only means additional land for commercial and residential purposes. Yet there is already so much land from existing reclamations that there is no need for another one.

Even more worrying to observers is that the proponent of the project, La Consolacion Seafront Development Corp., was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission only on October 13, 2019 with a capital investment of only P10 million. Aside from the small capital, LCSDC does not seem to have any track record of undertaking big projects.

In fact there seems no proof that LCSDC was able to build even a road or a school building. This company is not even included in the top 20,000 companies in the country. If Mayor Joannes Alegado is really concerned about the interests of his people, he should address their basic needs first while there is a pandemic, instead of embarking on a quixotic quest. Or is there a siren call only he can hear?