NGO: Ignoring bases toxic waste issue is trade risk
CLARK SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE—A nongovernment organization demanding the cleanup of former US military bases in the Philippines on Monday warned a top Clark Development Corp. official not to turn a blind eye on the toxic waste problem, saying this was risky to the redevelopment of Clark as an ecozone.
The People’s Task Force for Bases Clean-up raised concerns after CDC president and chief executive officer Antonio Ng called the toxic waste problem a “non-issue.” Ng made the statement during a recent meeting with Inquirer correspondents in Northern and Central Luzon.
Myrla Baldonado, PTFBC executive director, said the “non-recognition of the problem will lead to further exposure of the immediate inhabitants of the base, including him and his family (in case they live there), to toxic and hazardous wastes that are released as sites that are identified and are potentially contaminated are excavated to give way to infrastructures.”
While Ng, who assumed the post in March last year, dispelled the issue, he nevertheless agreed to look into it.
CDC executive vice president, Victor Jose Luciano, said the 12 sites identified by an environmental study in 1996 had been closed to reuse.
In a statement, Baldonado said the conversion of Clark could not take place without a cleanup. Public health and investments “cannot be sacrificed in the altar of quick cash,” she said.
She said the state-owned CDC could face “serious consequences (and) even liability suits for damages if they continue not to inform investors of the existing problem.” There are almost 400 firms now in Clark employing nearly 37,000 workers.
Ng, she said, was “aggressively marketing the property while ignoring the contamination problem which could potentially harm even the management, investors, workers, employees, developers, tourists and the residents of nearby communities.”
Baldonado said there was a “huge body of evidence of contamination” at Clark, at the former Subic Naval Base and other American bases shut down starting 1991 after the Senate refused to extend the 1947 Philippine-US military bases agreement.
The contamination, she said, was confirmed in reports by the US General Accounting Office (GAO, the investigative arm of US Congress), the US Department of Defense, and the Weston International environmental study.
The Department of Health, for one, confirmed the high levels of lead and arsenic in the blood of several Mt. Pinatubo evacuees who were sheltered at the Clark Air Base Command, a former motor pool of the US Air Force, she said. (INQ7)
The People’s Task Force for Bases Clean-up raised concerns after CDC president and chief executive officer Antonio Ng called the toxic waste problem a “non-issue.” Ng made the statement during a recent meeting with Inquirer correspondents in Northern and Central Luzon.
Myrla Baldonado, PTFBC executive director, said the “non-recognition of the problem will lead to further exposure of the immediate inhabitants of the base, including him and his family (in case they live there), to toxic and hazardous wastes that are released as sites that are identified and are potentially contaminated are excavated to give way to infrastructures.”
While Ng, who assumed the post in March last year, dispelled the issue, he nevertheless agreed to look into it.
CDC executive vice president, Victor Jose Luciano, said the 12 sites identified by an environmental study in 1996 had been closed to reuse.
In a statement, Baldonado said the conversion of Clark could not take place without a cleanup. Public health and investments “cannot be sacrificed in the altar of quick cash,” she said.
She said the state-owned CDC could face “serious consequences (and) even liability suits for damages if they continue not to inform investors of the existing problem.” There are almost 400 firms now in Clark employing nearly 37,000 workers.
Ng, she said, was “aggressively marketing the property while ignoring the contamination problem which could potentially harm even the management, investors, workers, employees, developers, tourists and the residents of nearby communities.”
Baldonado said there was a “huge body of evidence of contamination” at Clark, at the former Subic Naval Base and other American bases shut down starting 1991 after the Senate refused to extend the 1947 Philippine-US military bases agreement.
The contamination, she said, was confirmed in reports by the US General Accounting Office (GAO, the investigative arm of US Congress), the US Department of Defense, and the Weston International environmental study.
The Department of Health, for one, confirmed the high levels of lead and arsenic in the blood of several Mt. Pinatubo evacuees who were sheltered at the Clark Air Base Command, a former motor pool of the US Air Force, she said. (INQ7)
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