‘Condos beyond treetops’

Gordon: ‘Travesty’ of environmental zoning

The construction of two high-rise condominium buildings by Korean shipbuilder Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction Ltd. in the Subic rainforest came under fire yesterday from Sen. Richard Gordon, a former administrator of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA).

A “shocked” Gordon said the buildings were only the latest “travesty” done to the former US naval base since he was replaced by Felicito Payumo as SBMA administrator during the Estrada administration. The SBMA is the government agency that manages the Subic Bay Freeport.

“I would not have accommodated it,” the senator said, adding that he would have convinced the Koreans to build the condominiums for their company staff in Olongapo City—”so they could mix with the populace”—or in neighboring Bataan province.

The site of the Hanjin condominium buildings is within the Subic Watershed Forest Reserve, a check by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net, showed.

Covering 10,000 hectares and cared for by the US Navy until its pullout in 1992, the site was classified as protected by virtue of Proclamation No. 926, which then President Corazon Aquino issued on June 15, 1992.

The reserve, located on the Morong, Bataan, side of the free port, was declared protected for “purposes of protecting, maintaining, or improving its water yield and providing a restraining mechanism for inappropriate forest exploitation and disruptive land use.”

An official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Bataan said the proclamation had been amended, shrinking the reserve to 8,000 ha.

While the original proclamation had assigned executive control and administration of the area to the environment secretary, the SBMA has actually been managing it, the official said.

Gordon said the three-ha area where the 10-story and 20-story condominium buildings were put up had already been cleared of trees when Subic was still a US naval base.

He said an ammunitions and explosives testing area, warehouses and bunkhouses used to stand in that area.

“There were no trees anymore. Maybe 18 or 19 trees were cut, but these were small ones,” Gordon said, correcting the impression that the buildings were put up in the middle of the forest.

He said the structures only appeared to be in the middle of the rainforest because the photo run by the Inquirer was taken “as you enter the naval magazine.”

“What I disagree with is that [a building went too high], beyond the treetops. They allowed the Koreans to go beyond 10 stories. Nakakainis iyon (That’s annoying),” Gordon said.

He said he himself was shocked to see the structures, which cannot be seen from the ground because of the tree cover and can only be seen from the sea or from the air.

Environmental zoning

According to Gordon, whom then President Joseph Estrada replaced with Payumo as SBMA administrator, his successor did away with the Americans’ careful environmental zoning and planning, which he himself had strictly followed.

He said that if environmentalists were up in arms against the Hanjin condominiums, they should also assail the eight-story structure that was allowed to be built “very close to the forest” during Payumo’s term.

He pointed out that there was no “brouhaha” raised when that structure was built.

“I’m glad the Inquirer reported this, so everybody will see how Subic has been opened up to the rapaciousness of some,” Gordon said.

“There were areas that were not supposed to be occupied, yet they were occupied. Subic now is very different from the one left by the Americans and the one I left after my term,” he said.

‘Mere political appointee’

Gordon defended SBMA administrator Armand Arreza and laid the blame on SBMA environmental manager Amethya dela Llana Koval (not Amethyia de la Llana Kovak, as earlier reported) who, he said, was not qualified to hold the post but was a political appointee of Payumo.

He said Arreza had only followed the revised zoning plans made during Payumo’s term.

“I asked him why he (Arreza) approved it. He said they accommodated Hanjin because it was Subic’s biggest investor. He said he was not told by the staff that there was something wrong,” Gordon said.

In 2005, Hanjin’s P1.65-billion shipyard was the biggest single investment in the country.

The senator said Koval should be sacked: “She has no business holding that office.”

Not in core zone

Koval had earlier told the Inquirer that Hanjin obtained an environmental clearance certificate (ECC) for the two condominium buildings “last year.”

The SBMA was empowered to issue ECCs when then Environment Secretary Michael Defensor and SBMA officials signed a memorandum of agreement recognizing its “self-regulatory power” over the free port.

Koval said the Hanjin site was not within the “core zone,” the heart of the protected forests.

“The core zone is strictly no-touch,” she said, adding that the other areas were allowed for “sustainable use and recreation.”

“It’s among the built-up areas or sites that were previously used by the US Navy,” she said.

Arreza said the built-up areas had been “zoned for light industries with low-intensity use.”

“There were pockets of development there long before Hanjin came,” he said.

Double standard in housing

In Zambales, officials are seeing a double standard in Hanjin’s housing policy.

“There’s an imbalance, a discrimination,” Zambales Gov. Amor Deloso said after seeing a photograph of the high-rises in the Inquirer on Saturday.

Arreza earlier said the cost of building the high-rises was some $20 million. But in a press statement issued Saturday night, the SBMA put the figure at P455.6 million or $13 million.

In contrast, said former Zambales Vice Gov. Ramon Lacbain II, the Agusuhin resettlement project for the families displaced by the Korean shipyard turned out badly.

Lacbain heads Task Force Hanjin, which Deloso formed to oversee the social and employment aspects shipyard.

Agusuhin

Sitio Agusuhin, located on the hilly and rocky slopes of Barangay Cawag, was where the Subic local government transferred some 400 families from Sitio Quarry.

Portions of Quarry are now occupied by the 400-ha Hanjin shipyard just off the coast of Redondo Bay.

Hanjin funded the families’ relocation, donating P18 million to the local government for the construction of basic facilities like schools, day-care centers, chapels, water systems and electricity.

But Task Force Hanjin reports showed that most of the facilities were left unfinished, and a school building collapsed in August 2006 before the 300 students could use it.

A team from the Department of Public Works and Highways reported in August 2007 that structures worth P3 million had been built on the site.

Nagyantoc

Another relocation project for 280 families living in a portion of Sitio Nagyantoc that will be occupied by Hanjin’s expansion has been proceeding at a snail’s pace. Only 100 houses had been built at the 9.4-ha relocation site, also in Nagyantoc, as of last week.

The SBMA, which has jurisdiction over the former base lands in Subic, is having the units built at P90,000 each with funds from the land rental paid by Hanjin, Lacbain said.

“Hanjin put our fellow Filipinos in Agusuhin in a pitiful situation,” he said. “It showed that it has the capability to build beautiful condominiums. But why did it not at least offer a safe and livable place for those in Agusuhin? Why is it that it’s easy to part with money when their own Koreans are involved, and [not when it concerns] Filipinos?”

Hanjin president Shim Jong Sup did not reply to a request for comment.

But in September 2007, Hanjin asked the SBMA to set aside at least 40 ha for a planned workers’ village for its 15,000 Filipino employees.

Arreza confirmed this Saturday, saying President Macapagal-Arroyo had issued a proclamation assigning 40 ha of public land for the housing needs of Hanjin’s Filipino workers.

Rejoinder

Reached for comment on the phone, Payumo said Gordon was “shooting from his mouth without verifying the facts.”

“It was not during my term that the SBMA board approved [Hanjin’s] housing project. You can check with the SBMA ecology center and it would show that it was approved last year,” he said.

Payumo’s term ended in 2005.

According to Payumo, talks on Hanjin’s shipyard project began during his term but it was during the term of his successor, Francisco Licuanan, that the SBMA board approved it.

Payumo also said Gordon was “responsible for the cutting of trees.”

He was referring to that part of the Subic forests that was cleared to make space for at least 21 luxury villas built for the use of the heads of state who attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit held at the free port in 1996.

“He did not only order the cutting of trees there. The villas were [also] put up as mortgage. When the developer failed to pay the banks, and the banks foreclosed on the loan, the Home Guarantee Fund assumed the payments for several hundred millions. The government shouldered the liabilities,” Payumo said.
By Tonette Orejas, Dona Pazzibugan - Philippine Daily Inquirer