THERE IS no quarrying in the City of San Fernando.
Hence, the letter Atty. Vivian Dabu, “so-called provincial administrator of Pampanga,” sent to Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez that alleged the city is engaged in hauling and transporting of “quarry materials” without permit or receipt “smacks of ignorance of the truth as well as utter disrespect for the local chief executive and his position.”
The City of San Fernando is not engaged in quarrying.
“The city government has been de-silting the city’s waterways, including canals and creeks, to avert flooding. The work is being undertaken by Task Force Kontra Albug that now coordinates with the DPWH in the implementation of the multi-million-peso Sagip-Ilog Program.
Silt is removed and deposited in the city’s low-lying areas that need filling materials. This is done with the use of the city’s dump trucks with automatically-operated covers and with no extended sides that may allow over-loading.
The city government has invested in heavy equipment to undertake massive de-silting of its waterways and has been reaping its gains. The city has been virtually flood-free during the past several years, boosting the city’s efforts to become the regional center for business and investment.
De-silting is not quarrying so there is no need to secure a permit to extract and/or haul the materials removed…
What the “provincial administrator” regards as quarry is mud, spoils and garbage in the city’s river channels, ditches, canals and sewers. Dabu should be the first to know this. It was through the city government that the drainage system at the Capitol grounds was excavated.
There is no quarrying in the City of San Fernando. There is desilting. So stated so clearly the city government of the issue at hand.
So was the issue clarified? Not the least, apparently, to the “so-called provincial administrator.”
Dabu, in media reports, lectured that “under the law, silt from waterways should be left on the embankments as otherwise, when extracted, it would be considered commercial in nature even if it was given for free.”
There is absolutely no majesty of the law there. There is only utter idiocy. Silt extracted from rivers left on embankments will be promptly washed back to the rivers at the first drop of rain. The very definition of desilting is to extract the silt deposits and prevent their recurrence. Hence, the need to take the silt as far away from the rivers as possible. That makes sense.
To follow that stupid law of leaving silt on embankments will create a Sisyphean situation, a never-ending cycle of desilting. (To the clueless, Sisyphus in Greek mythology is a cruel king of Corinth condemned forever to roll a huge boulder up a hill in Hades only to have it roll down again on nearing the top.)
The strict enforcement of that law bred corruption among contractors and “contactors” in infra agencies of government at the time of the engineering efforts to contain the lahar rampages in the wake of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions. Desilting contracts were premium choices during that period for high returns at so low in terms of investments.
Desilting is not quarrying. If Dabu insisted otherwise and be given her way, then she indeed is on top of the governor himself.
Let me refresh some memories here.
In October 2007, a word war broke between the Capitol and Bacolor Mayor Buddy Dungca which led to the governor filing charges against the mayor. (What happened to those charges na?) The casus belli? Desilting versus quarrying.
The heavy rains of August and September had rendered the Gugu Creek heavily silted. The spectre of the October 1, 1995 Cabalantian tragedy poised like Damocles’ Sword upon some barangays prompted Dungca to implement sustained desilting operations.
From out of the blue, Balas quarrymen ordered a stop to the desilting operations. Of course, Dungca persisted. It came to a point where heavily armed police troopers were dispatched to Gugu – on the Capitol’s orders – to prevent any desilting there.
Here is a direct take from my Zona Libre of Oct. 10, 2007:
“Apparently incensed at some insinuations from the Bacolor folk that his stoppage of the operations manifested a most-unpriestly, if not inhuman, side of Panlilio, the governor hit back by declaring that what was being done was not desilting but quarrying, with the qualification that “what was dug was sold, and not used to buttress the earthen dikes or given to the residents as pantambak.”
So there, yet another qualification to the Q definition: “that which is sold.”
Truly, quarry is a very dynamic word.”
On that Panlilio qualification, Dabu holds nothing but fetid air in this issue with the City of San Fernando. Same thing she holds onto as “so-called provincial administrator.”
Hence, the letter Atty. Vivian Dabu, “so-called provincial administrator of Pampanga,” sent to Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez that alleged the city is engaged in hauling and transporting of “quarry materials” without permit or receipt “smacks of ignorance of the truth as well as utter disrespect for the local chief executive and his position.”
The City of San Fernando is not engaged in quarrying.
“The city government has been de-silting the city’s waterways, including canals and creeks, to avert flooding. The work is being undertaken by Task Force Kontra Albug that now coordinates with the DPWH in the implementation of the multi-million-peso Sagip-Ilog Program.
Silt is removed and deposited in the city’s low-lying areas that need filling materials. This is done with the use of the city’s dump trucks with automatically-operated covers and with no extended sides that may allow over-loading.
The city government has invested in heavy equipment to undertake massive de-silting of its waterways and has been reaping its gains. The city has been virtually flood-free during the past several years, boosting the city’s efforts to become the regional center for business and investment.
De-silting is not quarrying so there is no need to secure a permit to extract and/or haul the materials removed…
What the “provincial administrator” regards as quarry is mud, spoils and garbage in the city’s river channels, ditches, canals and sewers. Dabu should be the first to know this. It was through the city government that the drainage system at the Capitol grounds was excavated.
There is no quarrying in the City of San Fernando. There is desilting. So stated so clearly the city government of the issue at hand.
So was the issue clarified? Not the least, apparently, to the “so-called provincial administrator.”
Dabu, in media reports, lectured that “under the law, silt from waterways should be left on the embankments as otherwise, when extracted, it would be considered commercial in nature even if it was given for free.”
There is absolutely no majesty of the law there. There is only utter idiocy. Silt extracted from rivers left on embankments will be promptly washed back to the rivers at the first drop of rain. The very definition of desilting is to extract the silt deposits and prevent their recurrence. Hence, the need to take the silt as far away from the rivers as possible. That makes sense.
To follow that stupid law of leaving silt on embankments will create a Sisyphean situation, a never-ending cycle of desilting. (To the clueless, Sisyphus in Greek mythology is a cruel king of Corinth condemned forever to roll a huge boulder up a hill in Hades only to have it roll down again on nearing the top.)
The strict enforcement of that law bred corruption among contractors and “contactors” in infra agencies of government at the time of the engineering efforts to contain the lahar rampages in the wake of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions. Desilting contracts were premium choices during that period for high returns at so low in terms of investments.
Desilting is not quarrying. If Dabu insisted otherwise and be given her way, then she indeed is on top of the governor himself.
Let me refresh some memories here.
In October 2007, a word war broke between the Capitol and Bacolor Mayor Buddy Dungca which led to the governor filing charges against the mayor. (What happened to those charges na?) The casus belli? Desilting versus quarrying.
The heavy rains of August and September had rendered the Gugu Creek heavily silted. The spectre of the October 1, 1995 Cabalantian tragedy poised like Damocles’ Sword upon some barangays prompted Dungca to implement sustained desilting operations.
From out of the blue, Balas quarrymen ordered a stop to the desilting operations. Of course, Dungca persisted. It came to a point where heavily armed police troopers were dispatched to Gugu – on the Capitol’s orders – to prevent any desilting there.
Here is a direct take from my Zona Libre of Oct. 10, 2007:
“Apparently incensed at some insinuations from the Bacolor folk that his stoppage of the operations manifested a most-unpriestly, if not inhuman, side of Panlilio, the governor hit back by declaring that what was being done was not desilting but quarrying, with the qualification that “what was dug was sold, and not used to buttress the earthen dikes or given to the residents as pantambak.”
So there, yet another qualification to the Q definition: “that which is sold.”
Truly, quarry is a very dynamic word.”
On that Panlilio qualification, Dabu holds nothing but fetid air in this issue with the City of San Fernando. Same thing she holds onto as “so-called provincial administrator.”
