DEVASTATION. An earth mound reportedly quarried for filling materials for the Midori Hotel.
Midori Hotel, a P2-billion, six-storey, 120- room hotel which Clark Development Corp. (CDC) President-CEO
Arthur Tugade once said is “close to the environment because midori means green in Japanese,” is reportedly cutting cost by illegally obtaining its soil materials from a nearby mound at the Clark special economic zone.
The quarry site is located just a few meters from the Sacobia Bridge across the Zoocobia Paradise Ranch.
The owners of Midori Hotel, Taiwanese businessmen Jack Yam and Tony Huang and their local partner Irineo “Bong” Alvaro, are also the owners of BB International Leisure and Resort Development Corp. (BBI) now constructing a multi-billion water theme park project here, the Clark Valley View Leisure and Resort located
at Gate 14 at the northwestern section of this freeport.
The BBI project has been receiving flak for being sited inside the ancestral domain of the Aeta tribes, even as local environmentalists have branded it as a “threat to the Clark watershed.” The Midori Hotel is located on a 2.5-hectare property on Kalayaan Street near the Fontana Leisure Parks and the Mimosa Resort.
The soil extraction for Midori was allegedly approved by CDC- Public Safety Department (CDC-PSD) Manager
Gen. Ricardo Banayat (Ret.). According to documents obtained by Punto!, the soil for the Midori project is supposed to be imported from Pangasinan.
However, in order to cut costs, the managers of the Midori project reportedly requested Banayat for the approval of the soil extraction at the Sacobia quarry site for 12 truckloads per day.
The quarry site is about two kilometers from the project site. The illegal soil extraction has been going on for two weeks, a source said. A hill is now almost flattened because of the soil extraction, he added. The source said CDC approved the soil extraction project to widen the road along the Sacobia area when they asked why it is allowing the quarrying in Sacobia.
Engr. Rey Cruz of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) said he is not aware of any permit issued for the Midori project in the area. He said “any extraction of ordinary earth or quarry materials should be covered by pertinent permits.” In the case of Midori, “wala po kaming alam dyan (we don’t know anything about that.)”
