Our latest offering is a two-part report on the mining mayhem that is now unfolding in Zambales province, one of the areas hardest hit by Typhoon Kiko last week. Earlier last year, the people of Zambales had endured a similar tragedy when Typhoon Cosme struck.

Zambales, widely held to be rich in nickel, chrome, gold and other mineral deposits, has lured a bevy of mining companies big and small. But the surge in mining operations, as the first part of the report reveals, is now taking its toll on the livelihood, the environment, and the safety and well-being of the residents. (Also see sidebar: “Jobs, mines, power, violence”)

Today when typhoons visit Zambales, an eerie scene engulfs most of the towns —- floodwaters rising so fast and so high, and blood-colored water rushing down from upstream, breaching riverbanks in some places, and inundating ricefields.

This report was written by multimedia journalist Jaileen F. Jimeno —- former PCIJ deputy executive director and program manager of highly acclaimed public-affairs programs on GMA-7.

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Mining mayhem triggers eco-disaster in Zambales

by Jaileen F. Jimeno – http://www.pcij.org/stories/2009/zambales.html

18 August 2009

First of Two Parts

STA. CRUZ, ZAMBALES —- Nickel is not doing too well in the world market these days, but residents here do not seem to mind, even though nickel has become one of this town’s major revenue earners.

That’s because whenever nickel commands top dollar, red dust smothers the town’s main highway and the pier, and red mud cakes the roads. Residents also have to share their small barangay roads with huge, lumbering trucks, and when rains come, floodwaters the color of blood fill their ricefields. Meanwhile, up in the mountains, armed guards hired by mining firms menace real and imagined foes and sometimes engage each other in deadly shootouts.

No wonder Zambales Governor Amor Deloso has taken to describing Sta. Cruz —- some 170 kilometers north of Manila —- as “parang Iraq (like Iraq).”

Deloso seems to confine such a description to what he and others say is the increased militarization in this town because of mining. But he may well also be describing the helter-skelter way mining is being conducted in the entire province, recalling the mayhem and lawlessness in Iraq. Ironically, according to local officials and ordinary Zambalenos, the situation can be traced largely to no less than Deloso’s mining policies.

The governor himself says that Zambales has become a “battleground between big and small interests, national against local officials, with some intramurals between me and the mayor (of Sta. Cruz).” Yet he is unapologetic about the policies on mining he has crafted, even though lawyers and some local officials say the legality of these are, at the very least, suspect, especially those pertaining to small-scale mining.

These are also why unearthing Zambales’s minerals (which include chromite and gold and are estimated to be worth billions of dollars) has turned the province into a virtual powder keg waiting to explode. Indeed, Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Joselito ‘Lito’ Atienza has called Zambales “the most problematic province in terms of mining.”

Laws bent, ignored

Zambales’s mining mayhem, however, is not only a template of how local governments should not manage the industry. It also reveals how national agencies like the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) are rendered inutile as laws are bent and manipulated to suit the needs of local officials.

Confesses a mid-level DENR official when confronted with the situation in Zambales: “Our men just deal with small problems on the ground, like conflicts between small miners.”

This is even though it was the DENR that issued the implementing rules and regulations for Republic Act 7076 or the 1991 People’s Small-Scale Mining Law. It is also the DENR that has direct supervision and control over some of the vital bodies that govern small-scale mining, which is aimed at helping generate income for the rural poor.

These include the Provincial Mining and Regulatory Board (PMRB), a five-member body that is supposed to be headed by the regional director of the DENR’s Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB). It is the DENR’s implementing agency for the People’s Small-Scale Mining Program. Among other things, it is upon its recommendation that a small-scale mining contract is issued by the governor.

In addition, it is the DENR secretary who has “direct supervision and control over the (People’s Small-Scale Mining Program) and activities of small-scale miners” within the designated area.

Jobs, mines, power, violence

ZAMBALES is not new to mining. Acoje Mining dug for chromite in Sta Cruz for 75 years beginning in the 1930s. In 1934, Benguet Corporation began to extract chromite from the mountains of nearby Masinloc town, and continued doing so for half a century. In San Marcelino town, the Benguet-Dizon firm leveled mountains for gold, easing up only when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991.

These days, there are at least eight mining firms with permits to conduct large-scale mining in Zambales. But they are no longer the only players on the block, and are in fact sometimes even being forced to share mining space with small-scale miners, courtesy of the capitol’s rather haphazard way of issuing its infamous 30-day mining permits.

Then again, it’s not only small-scale miners who have been caught in areas already committed to major mining operations. A3UNA Mining Corporation, a large-scale mining permit holder, has also been accused of straying into the sites of its fellow big companies —- and far too many times at that.

This has prompted the usually lax Provincial Mining and Regulatory Board (PMRB) to try reining in A3UNA, albeit with not much success.

“We have issued several cease-and-desist orders against A3UNA,” says a PMRB member, explaining that the orders were prompted by the company’s intrusion into mining areas owned by other groups. Yet every time an inspection team was sent by the capitol to investigate such complaints, says the PMRB member who declines to be named, policemen and soldiers had to act as escorts.

And with reason. Just last October, the firm’s guards traded gunfire with policemen accompanying the province’s Task Force Kalikasan, which was seeking confirmation regarding yet another complaint against A3UNA.

Six months earlier, Filipinas Mining Corporation (FMC) had also written Environment Secretary Lito Atienza, alleging that A3UNA project manager Jaime Lazaro “and a group of about 30 persons including about 12 security guards and personal security detail armed with M16 automatic rifles” had forcibly entered and occupied its site.

Permit or contract

A DENR primer on small-scale mining says either a permit or a contract can be issued. A permit is good for two years and renewable only once. A contract is also effective for two years, but is renewable for like periods.

Both permits and contracts emphasize artisanal work or manual labor; the use of heavy or sophisticated equipment like drilling machines, payloaders, and excavators is prohibited. Too, the law limits the annual production for metallic minerals for a small-scale mining operator at a maximum 50,000 tons of ore.

Clarificatory guidelines signed in 2007 by then DENR Secretary Angelo Reyes say that contracts are issued to cooperatives that will work in sites designated as small-scale mining areas. Permits are issued to qualified individuals who have the “capacity to contract” or a corporation or partnership “authorized to engage in mining, registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, (with) at least 60 percent of the capital…owned at all times by Filipino citizens.”

Permits cover sites outside of small-scale mining areas; they are issued following the rules spelled out in Presidential Decree No. 1899, a Marcos-era law that remains in force.

Reyes’s guidelines, however, make it clear that both permit- and contract-holders are bound by the “provisions of … the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, the Small-Scale Mining Laws and their implementing rules and regulations, among others.”

Zambales, though, does not seem to believe it needs to follow these laws. Since 2007, it has been one-month small-scale mining permits that allow a holder to haul off 50,000 tons of ores within that period from a five-hectare area. The permits can be renewed twice, after which a miner only has to show proof of active extraction to secure a longer-term permit. And contrary to stipulations in the small-scale mining laws, these allow a holder to use heavy equipment to extract the ore from the ground.

But Zambales Governor Deloso, who is also a lawyer, sees no conflict with his province’s unique mining permits and national laws.

“Nobody can stop a governor from giving a special permit to in any line of business,” he says. “It is not prohibited, therefore it is permitted.”

Still, he does subtly acknowledge the prohibition against the use of heavy machinery in small-scale mining by calling the provision “backward” and “impractical.”

It consigns small-scale miners to “kamote mining,” he says, thundering, “How can you get 50,000 tons with your spade and wheelbarrow? It’s like telling me that since my father rides a horse-drawn carriage, I should not drive a car.”

Deloso points to Zambales’s past forays into mining as one reason why he decided to come up with the short-term permit for small-scale miners. He says that big miners, though operating for generations, did not contribute much to the capitol’s coffers, since they sent their taxes directly to the national government. The province even had to repair roads in mining areas that were run down by heavy trucks and machinery, he says.

Permit for P10K

This time around, Zambales issues its one-month mining permit to anyone who can cough up P10,000 as issuance-fee payment. Small-scale miners also have to pay the provincial government an “enhancement fee” of P50 per metric ton of nickel and P60 per metric ton of chromite. There is a P15,000 fee for a Provincial Environmental Clearance Certificate (PECC) as well.

Despite these fees, hundreds of entrepreneurs line up for the permits. One harried employee of the Environment and Natural Resources of Zambales (ENROZ) was reduced to spewing mixed metaphors, saying that the permits have been “selling like hotcakes” and that applicants show up at the ENROZ office “like mushrooms after a thunderstorm.”

The employee said that before Deloso became governor two years ago, ENROZ received just three mining inquiries a month. By mid-2006, it was handling as much as five new applicants a day, aside from those following up on the processing of their permits, making ENROZ’s small office seem like a market on a payday weekend.

Quips Sangguniang Panlalawigan member Samuel Ablola, chair of the capitol’s environment and natural resources committee and who thought of the “enhancement fee”: “Halos lahat na may application. Baka iyong sementeryo na lang ang wala (Almost all land areas have pending mining applications. Maybe only the cemeteries are spared).”

Indications are that most of those permits are granted. In the past, Zambales was netting an annual average of only P3 million in regulatory and extraction fees from mining and quarrying activities. As late as 2006, ENROZ was still reporting a total annual collection of P3.3 million from mining and quarrying. Yet, just a year later, that figure had shot up to P28.3 million —- and that excluded monies collected as enhancement fees.

The provincial government does not get the bulk of the income from mining, taking only 30 percent of the revenue. Another 30 percent goes to the host town, while the remaining 40 percent is supposed to go to the barangay where the mining site is.

But Deloso does not seem to mind. The capitol’s share will go to the provincial government’s general fund, he says, and mulls, “I can spend it for school buildings and repair of roads.”

The governor says ENROZ will manage the fund from the enhancement-fee payments, which helped the capitol’s yearly total mining income rise to almost P60 million in 2008. He has already designated Botolan, his hometown, as a beneficiary of the enhancement-fee fund, but is vague about specific projects.

Wild about mining

Botolan, just a few minutes away by car from the capitol, hosts nickel mining companies, among them NiHAO Mineral Resources International, Inc, which is headed by former DENR Secretary Michael Defensor. The town was submerged recently in floodwaters that reached rooftops, after a dam broke at the height of Typhoon Kiko.

Yet despite the revenue windfall generated by the capitol’s one-month mining permits, some local officials are far from being pleased. In fact, Sta. Cruz Mayor Luisito Marty fumes when the subject of the permits comes up in an interview.

“People go wild,” he says. “All of a sudden, there are these little mining companies in our midst.”

It’s bad enough that the capitol does not consult the concerned municipality before issuing the permits. According to Marty, mining firms now also bypass his office and go directly to barangay officials for permission to operate in their chosen area.

Since 2007, a smarting Marty has not issued a mining permit, save for one that went to the firm A3UNA Mining Corporation, which is on the DENR’s list of eight companies permitted to do large-scale mining in Zambales. But miners big and small have nevertheless invaded his town, waving papers from the capitol or from barangay officials.

Fights have broken out over overlapping claims, prompting several overzealous firms to hire security guards, some of whom are described by Deloso as “vicious.” Referring to the big mining companies, he adds, “They all have private armies and camps.”

In January 2008, then DENR Region III Director Anselmo Abungan wrote to Deloso, asking him to refrain from issuing permits already covered by prior mining permits.

Abungan also asked the capitol to secure an area clearance from the DENR before granting a permit. The request stemmed from a complaint by three major mining firms against A3UNA for alleged illegal mining and quarrying. A3UNA turned out to be holding a permit granted by the capitol to small miners.

But Deloso says the problem could have been avoided had the big mining companies approached him before they began operating. “They were boasting that they were protected by the national government, that’s why there was trouble,” he says.

It’s a statement that may not go unchallenged. Even ordinary folk have been grumbling over the capitol’s one-month mining permits, which are issued so frequently and speedily that the provincial government has been hard-pressed in keeping up-to-date records.

With a combined staff of just 20 people, ENROZ and the PMRB have also found it difficult to doublecheck an applicant’s claim of having satisfied the requirements and if a permit-holder is following mining rules and regulations.

Theoretically, the PMRB provides the check and balance to the capitol’s power to issue mining permits and contracts. It is also through this body that the DENR keeps tabs on small-scale mining in the area. Yet especially after current DENR Region III Director Danilo Uykieng assigned an underling to attend meetings, the crucial decision-making has been left to the rest of the board members —- who are all Deloso appointees.

Rubber-stamp board?

A PMRB member who declines to be named for fear of antagonizing the capitol confirms that all one-month permits go through the board. But the member says that there is a tendency to gloss over the failure of small miners to submit complete requirements.

The member says that instead, the PMRB has tried to focus on ensuring that mining claims do not overlap. Yet the board performs dismally even in that, says the member, because any effort to validate a claim is thwarted by a swift move for a vote.

This has made the board function like a rubber stamp. When the motion is carried, documents granting the permit are readied for Deloso’s approval. According to the board member, the governor signs the papers without knowing how the debates went.

Another PMRB insider says this had exasperated Uykieng, who was said to be even more upset when the board approved small-scale mining permits for areas where there were already large-scale operations. Uykieng, who is supposed to head the PMRB, reportedly said, “What am I here for, if you don’t respect the large-scale permits?”

The insider says Uykieng, who was appointed as DENR Region III director in May 2008, sat in only two board meetings before he began sending an underling to take his place.

PMRB secretariat head Wilson Biag admits some small-scale mining permits encroach into large-scale mining areas. But he says the small-scale miners were there first.

He also defends the 30-day small-scale mining permits by noting that the industry’s big players already control 90 percent of Zambales’s mineral-rich areas. Small-scale miners begin their trade at a disadvantage, Biag argues, so they need all the help they can get.

The boost from the capitol includes allowing those armed only with exploration permits to extract up to 20 metric tons of minerals even in areas that are already legally spoken for. Reasons Biag: “We want to give them (small-scale miners) time to check if there are minerals, before they invest more money into the project.”

The irony is that the month-long permits have become the alternate source of ores for big firms that want to speed up mineral collection.

Biag says the capitol is aware of the practice. “We are trying to resolve this because the permits are non-transferable,” he says. “They come to some sort of an agreement that the small-scale miner is just the claimant, and the big mining firms are the operator.”

For a fixed fee, a small-scale mining permit holder may also totally surrender its site to a major mining company.

No legal basis

Biag says the capitol is drawing up new guidelines to make Zambales’s small-scale mining practices dovetail with the national government’s policies. But to Leo Jasareno, chief of the MGB’s Mining Tenements Management Division, the issue is simple: “These permits are not part of the mining laws. Anything that is not in the mining law has no legal basis. That’s common sense.”

He says that the DENR has been working on an order that will guide governors and local government units (LGUs) in implementing the Small-Scale Mining Act. Jasareno says efforts to draft the guidelines had been hampered by a controversy over the department’s January 5, 2009 order for all extractions to be covered by a Mineral Ore Export Permit (MOEP) before being shipped out.

The MOEP is a DENR initiative to curb ore smuggling. Jasareno says that compliance with the MOEP order has been almost 100 percent. The sole exception is Deloso, who even asked the Court of Appeals last January to have the order rescinded, arguing that it was “an administrative issuance which is not sanctioned by R.A. 7942.”

Jasareno says that once the mining guide for LGUs is finalized, it will address the issues in Zambales. But legal experts like environment and human rights lawyer Antonio La Vina say that all the DENR has to do is to “assert its power.”

“All of the environmental powers of the LGUs are also under the control and review of the DENR,” points out La Vina, who is dean of the Ateneo de Manila University’s School of Government. He says the department can put a stop to what is happening in Zambales “by issuing a cease-and-desist order.”

“That’s the proper remedy,” he asserts.

La Vina also echoes other legal experts in saying that while the Local Government Code gives provincial and municipal officials latitude in developing their own rules, these should never contradict national laws.

To Governor Deloso, however, the issue is more about justice than the law. “I do not understand,” he says, “why the big firms will get all the benefits from mining, and Zambales gets nothing.”

He says his policies are easing poverty in Zambales. After all, says Deloso, very few residents from mining towns like Sta. Cruz now line up in front of his office to ask for money. PCIJ, August 2009

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Firms mining watershed, forest areas of Zambales

By Jaileen F. Jimeno, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, http://www.pcij.org/stories/2009/zambales2.html

18 August 2009

Last of Two Parts

STA. CRUZ, ZAMBALES. —- For nearly two years now, Leonardo Lustria Jr., manager of the Sta. Cruz water district, has been at his wit’s end trying to find ways to protect the town’s watershed, which feeds Sta. Cruz’s two irrigation systems and provides local folk with potable water.

“They’re mining the watershed!” he says.

“We have a waterfall up there,” says Lustria. “We have more Mindoro pines there than in Mindoro, and pitcher plants that that are among the biggest in the country.

Some 20 kms from the town proper, the Sta. Cruz watershed was also reforested more than a decade ago through an P18.1-million loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) project, which called for the planting of mahogany, acacia, agoho, eucalyptus, and other types of trees, was carried out from 1994 to 1999.

In total, the national government borrowed P27.5 million from the ADB to reforest five areas in Zambales. The biggest reforestation site —- 1,000 hectares or 67 percent of the total —- was at the Sta. Cruz watershed. Today all five reforested areas are being mined. Randolph Mirador, who headed the people’s organization that planted trees in Sta. Cruz under the ADB program, can only say with a sigh, “Talagang nakasasama ng loob (It’s really heartbreaking).”

In her 2008 State of the Nation Address, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo dedicated a few lines to mining, asking business and civil society to “continue to work for a socially equitable, economically viable balance of interests.”

“Mining companies,” she said, “should ensure that host communities benefit substantively from their investments, and with no environmental damage from operations.”

Arroyo also outlined her plan to set aside P2 billion for reforestation in 2009, saying the forests mitigate the effects of the increasing frequency and intensity of typhoons brought on by climate change.

In Zambales, officials and ordinary folk alike are still debating the financial benefits of mining. But there seems to be little question among most of them that the surge in this province’s version of “small-scale mining” in the last two years has brought with it fast-rising floods during heavy rains, and even a decline in the output of several farms.

This has threatened Sta. Cruz’s reputation as the province’s rice granary. In Barangay Guisguis, a group of women surveying a nearby river and a swathe of ricefields after an afternoon downpour take in a eerie scene that only fortifies the fear they now feel whenever the rains come: blood-colored water rushing down from upstream, breaching riverbanks in some places, the murky water inundating ricefields.

“When there was no mining, the river was deep enough to take in the rainwater,” comments one of the women. “Now the river overflows and the water goes directly to our ricefields.”

Sta. Cruz was among those hardest hit by Typhoon Kiko, which saw a state of calamity being declared in the whole of Zambales. Early last year, Guisguis was also among the areas on which Typhoon Cosme had the worst impact. Residents had to wade through waist-high floodwaters in darkness at the height of the typhoon, with several families seeking refuge at a local daycare center.

Guisguis residents say that they have had floods before. But they say that these days, the waters rise too quickly. Says one resident: “The soil was parched and Cosme brought just a little rain, which can only mean that the mountain is now absorbing less.”

In fact, aside from scraping the forest cover and operating in the watershed, some miners here have also bulldozed their way through plots covered by the DENR’s Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM).

‘Kamote Mining’

Under this program, people living in the community are given a portion of the forest to plant trees, from which they are supposed to earn some livelihood. According to Sta. Cruz Mayor Luisito Marty, portions of the CBFM area covering some 5,000 hectares in barangays Guisguis and Ginabon have been overrun by those who present themselves as small-scale miners.

“There’s kamote mining there,” he says. “We’ve lost control because Governor (Amor) Deloso keeps on issuing permits.”

Community activist Mirador, who ventured into the CBFM scheme as well, also says at least three mining firms are now intruding into the area that he and other people used to tend.

Of all barangays down the main mining site in Sta. Cruz, Guisguis has the most to lose. It has some 400 hectares of productive ricelands, and is a huge player in palay trading in Olongapo City and Pangasinan, with which it shares a border. It is estimated that Guisguis alone produces an average of 32,000 sacks of palay each harvest time. Planting can be as frequent as thrice a year in most areas.

“Ang barangay namin, umunlad dahil sa agrikultura (Our community improved because of agriculture),” says Guisguis barangay captain Juvenar Mose. “Wala kaming ibang inasahan kundi pagtatanim. Walang yumaman dito dahil sa mina (We relied on nothing else but farming. No one here got rich because of mining).”

Lomboy barangay captain Randy Merced probably shares the same sentiments. The rambunctious 41-year-old is busy worrying over the possibility that should all those holding mining permits —- individual and corporate alike —- operate simultaneously, his barangay’s ricefields would not fare well, since their dam lies close to a major creek upland.

Big Firm The Culprit

As it is, he is still upset over the siltation of his barangay’s irrigation system. The culprit, he says, is one of the big mining firms.

On paper, there is no mining operation in Lomboy. But like all other communities on the slopes of Sta. Cruz’s nickel- and chromite-laden mountain range, it is a receptacle of all that may flow from mining areas. Lomboy has 110 hectares of irrigated farmland. Twenty hectares, however, rely on rainwater.

Merced says that for days, he and a dozen volunteers had manually dug up a small reservoir to serve as catch basin for the water requirement of the unirrigated 20 hectares. They later found their efforts erased.

“Kinalkal ng isang kompanya ang kabundukan at doon sa hinukay namin itinambak ang bato at lupa. Gagawa yata sila ng daan (One company leveled a portion of the hill for a road and dumped boulders and dirt on our reservoir),” says Merced.

It’s bad enough that whenever it rains, nickel-laden soil from the mountains flow into Sta. Cruz’s rivers and creeks and into irrigation canals, he says. The result: “Namula ang palay namin, ayaw magbunga (Our plants turned red and refused to produce grains).”

Even officials of the local chapter of the Rotary Club say they would rather that the capitol focus on preserving the natural beauty of the town, instead of issuing one mining permit after another. After all, Sta. Cruz has four islands off its coast, including the so-called ‘ Miss Universe Island ‘ that was a shoot destination for contestants of an international beauty pageant in the 1970s. Sta. Cruz also has a 300-hectare marine sanctuary where giant clams are being raised.

The view, however, is often marred by the site of tons of nickel stockpiled at pier, as well as the coast’s blood-red water, courtesy of the mined mountain range.

No Safety Engineering

The staining of bodies of water is the first sign that mining upstream is being carried out without the required safety engineering, explains Mining Tenements Management Division chief Leo Jasareno of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB).

Indeed, he says, monitoring reports from Zambales show no environmental protection measures like catchment basin, siltation ponds, and cover cropping. Without these, says Jasareno, silt will settle in irrigation canals, making these more shallow.

The MGB official indicates that these can be traced largely to the questionable one-month mining permits the capitol has been issuing since 2007. For one, he says, a big firm that pours considerable capital into its business is more likely to protect the environment to ensure continued tenure in area. For another, allowing quickie mining operations only means the government may not be able to hold anyone accountable should there be any damage to the environment.

“The technology is there,” says Jasareno, “but since it’s expensive, if you are a fly-by-night miner, you will not spend for it. Bodies of water will turn orange, and this is the first sign of environmental impacts of mining.”

He also says that any DENR-funded watershed project, including the one here in Sta. Cruz, is off limits to mining, and that any activity in such areas should first have clearance from the national agency. if at all. “If there’s no DENR clearance,” he says, “it means somebody violated the law and it should be looked into.”

Asked about the reforested area in the Sta. Cruz watershed, Governor Deloso would only say that inspecting it is the job of the DENR. “I don’t want them to say that I’m meddling too much,” he clarifies. “What I know is that not a lot of trees grew there.”

Deloso has said that he has set aside P5 million from the province’s mining revenues for reforestation…

Can’t Beat Mining?

“I will not go for any bargaining laban sa environment,” the governor declares. “Bayan ko iyan, probinsiya ko iyan, definitely ayokong masira. Gusto ko ba iyong dumausdos at mawalan kami ng palayan (It’s my country, my province, I definitely don’t want it destroyed. Why would I want landslides and the destruction of our rice fields?)

But he also says, “To go against mining, is actually counter-productive. Para tayong si Adan at si Eba (We’re like Adam and Eve). We have to face the challenge, but make it intelligent.”

For his part, Sangguniang Panlalawigan member Samuel Ablola, who heads the provincial board’s environment committee, says he is unaware of the watershed project in Sta. Cruz, noting that he was elected only in 2001. Like the governor, he says whatever happens to it is the DENR’s lookout, since it is a national government project.

But it seems mining in a watershed is not an issue to Ablola, especially when it’s on a mountain rich with mineral ores. He argues, “Hindi tutubuan ng puno ang bundok. Tanggalin mo muna ang minerals at kapag puro lupa at putik na iyan, mabubuhay ang mga kahoy (Trees won’t grow on the mountain. Strip it of its minerals first and once it’s all soil and mud, then the trees will flourish).”

That may not be a view shared by many local officials here in Sta. Cruz, especially when they have to deal with angry constituents wading in floodwaters or wailing about failed crops. It has not helped that mining permit-holders have not done much to endear themselves to residents here.

For instance, the day after Typhoon Cosme slammed through Zambales, the first order of priority of mining firms was to make sure the road to the pier, which crosses the main road and the poblacion, was immediately cleared of debris, even as residents dealt with the damage the typhoon caused.

Trucks-Choked Roads

During typhoon-free days, trucks filled with nickel block local roads. “Once there is a medical emergency, we may not be able to reach the hospital in time because the roads are choked with those trucks,” says one resident. He also points to the possible health hazards posed by nickel-laden dust, noting that many of his townmates are already complaining of respiratory problems.

But standing up to mining firms could also be hazardous to one’s health. Lomboy barangay captain Randy Merced, found this out after making known his opposition to mining public one too many times. He lets on that he was once “kidnapped” for his opposition to mining, but he refuses to elaborate. Some residents in his barangay whisper that Merced was mauled before he was released.

A high-ranking provincial official explains, “Si Kap Merced kasi hinaharang ang trak ng dalawang kompanya na ang nasa likod ay isang malaking pamilya sa probinsiya (Kap Merced had taken to blocking trucks of two companies that had a prominent family in the province as their common owner).”

To be fair, not everyone in Sta. Cruz is against mining. Guisguis barangay captain Mose admits that some of his constituents welcome it, especially those who have no land to till. After all, mining does provide employment to unskilled workers.

Mose himself has a confusing stand on mining. While he bats for a moratorium on permits to allow a study on the impact of mining, his office had asked mining firms for various forms of aid to his barangay, like providing scholarships to students.

One elderly resident here has been more steadfast in her belief that Sta. Cruz is better off without mining, so much so that she voted for Deloso in the 2007 polls because, she recalls, he had promised to put a stop to mining in this town.

The resident, who requests anonymity, says Deloso did as he promised —- at least for a month after the elections. When it became apparent that the new governor was reneging on his campaign pledge, the resident sought him out to remind him about it.

“Nagalit (He got mad),” says the woman, recalling the governor’s reaction. “Sabi niya ako na lang daw kaya ang mag-gobernador (He said maybe I should be the governor).”