The construction of the 36-hole DCC golf course atop a mountain at Clark remains on full steam as of Friday.
Photo by Ric Gonzales
CLARK FREEPORT – Central Luzon-based environmentalists have asked Clark Development Corp. (CDC) President and CEO Eduardo Oban Jr. to stop the construction of the $400-million Korean tourism estate project at Clark that destroyed trees and portions of a mountain believed to be a watershed.
Cecile Yumul of the Pampanga-based Save the Trees Coalition (STC) said Oban should immediately issue an order stopping the on-going construction of the Donggwang Clark Corporation (DCC) 36-hole golf course on top of the mountain at the northwest portion of this Freeport.
Yumul issued her statements amid the massive flooding in Pampanga brought about by torrential rains.
“The rains are not stopping at Clark. Nature is really showing that it’s more powerful in destroying compared to people.
If Donggwang will not stop killing the mountain and trees, nature will be the one to destroy them all,” said Yumul, who said the area of the DCC golf course is a watershed based on an international study commissioned during the time of former CDC President and CEO Romeo David.
Yumul said the area being destroyed by the DCC is a watershed based on the study of Louis Berger International Inc.
PART OF COMMUNITY
Sonny Dobles, president of the Alliance for the Development of Central Luzon (ADCL), quoted the late American scientist-geographer John Wesley Powell in explaining the importance of the watershed to communities around the area, including Sacobia area and barangays SapangBato and Margot in Angeles City and Calumpang and Marcos Village in Mabalacat City.
He said Powell described a watershed as “that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community.”
Worse, Dobles added, the area is a “head watershed,” meaning it’s the source of water supply of other watersheds in Clark.
For her part, Yumul said the area of the DCC’s golf course is a “typhoon belt,” meaning it should be reforested continuously.
“It’s ironic that the CDC allows the destruction of existing trees,” she added.
Dobles urged Oban, former Armed Forces chief of staff, to investigate “all these CDC officials who are behind this wanton destruction of nature and critical watersheds.”
Based on a CDC report, former CDC President and CEO BenignoRicafortwas at the helm when the government-owned corporation leased 304-hectares to the DCC in December 2010.
The contract’s coverage included the former True North Golf and Country Club Project that partially constructed a golf course in the area in 1997.
Diosdado Pangilinan, chairman of the Mabalacat Water District (MWD), said the CDC should “simply be asked if they want steady supply of water in many years to come or a golf course.”
He stressed that he is not “anti-development but we should realize that saving the ecological system is the priority for now and for many years to come.”
Pangilinan said the Pampanga Association of Water Districts (PAMAWAD), of which the MWD is a member, issued a resolution calling for n moratorium for at last five years of construction of golf courses at Clark, whose more than 3,000-hectare area falls under the jurisdiction of Mabalacat.
As early as Friday afternoon, Punto sent questions to Oban’s office and the CDC public relations department for their comments on the new issues raised by Yumul, Dobles and Pangilinan.
They have yet to issue statements as of press time.
