“Already, the DPWH has removed three kilometers of mangroves on the eastern bank of the Pampanga River towards the Manila Bay and this has exposed a P2.1- billion dike to possible storm surges,” said Mayor Danilo Guintu. He said the dike protects several local barangays from flooding and possible storm surges.
Former Vice Mayor Bajun Lacap, founder and chair of the Pampanga Coastal Emergency Response Group (PCERG), noted that “the mangrove there grew naturally, an indication it was part of God’s plan.”
“But engineers from the DPWH, who were reportedly mandated to spend government funds to prevent the funds being reverted to the national treasury, have insisted the mangroves were in the wrong place,” Lacap lamented, as he expressed fears that more mangrove areas are slated to be destroyed.
Supreme Court order
The removal of the mangroves was reportedly part of DPWH efforts to comply with a Supreme Court order in 2008 ordering various government agencies to undertake measures to clean up the Manila Bay, including all channels in
Metro Manila and nearby provinces that flow into the bay. In this regard, the DPWH in Pampanga was reportedly allocated P39 million for related projects in the Pampanga River.
Lacap noted that the destroyed mangrove area had served as sanctuary for fishes and birds, and has also provided livelihood to local folk engaged in making brooms and “tuba.”
The local parish’s statue of St. Michael, known to local folk as Apung Igi, would be paraded on a barge borrowed from Apalit town which uses it annually for its own fluvial parade for Apung Iru or St. Peter in June.
Lacap said about 40 other smaller barges and boats, all adorned for the fiesta, would join today’s fluvial parade along the Pampanga River starting from Barangay Bebe Anac to the Manila Bay.
The official feast of St. Michael is on May 8, but local folk have decided to mark it on May 6, he added.
Lacap also said the Apung Igi fluvial parade will stop and stay for sometime in the area of the destroyed mangroves to enable participants to pray for St. Michael’s intercession for the “enlightenment of the DPWH officials.”
“We are not only protecting the environment.
We are also saving our lives, as the removal of more mangroves and objection to reviving the denuded areas would mean exposing the anti- flooding dike to storm surges in our times when climate change has changed weather patterns,” he noted.
Delta project
The dike was part of the P2.1-billion Pampanga Delta Development Plan (PDDP) funded from a loan from Japan.
Lacap said destruction of the dike would endanger the lives of thousands of local folk in Barangays Sapang Cauayan, Ligui, Sagrada Familia, SAguing, Balibago, Alauli and Candelaria.
He also said that part of today’s fluvial parade would be the release of 250,000 tilapia fingerlings into the deeper sections of the Pampanga River. “The river itself is deep. It is the mouth of the Pampanga River that opens into Manila Bay that remains silted and constricted,” he added.
Lacap also said parade participants will also remove garbage within the Pampanga River and the Manila Bay.
Earlier, the DPWH also demolished the socalled secondary dike that also served as protection for the seven-meter, 13-kilometer main dike on the banks of the Pampanga River towards Manila Bay , also purportedly as part of complying with the Supreme Court order.
A PDDP survey done in 2004 indicated that 69 percent of residents on the left bank of the Pampanga River and 78 percent of residents on the right bank “recognized decrease in the frequency of flooding” after the PDDP (dike) project here was finished.”
Other components of the PDDP in Bulacan have not been finished arising from stiff protests from families who refused to give way to it in the towns of Calumpit, Hagonoy and Paombong.
“If the DPWH really wants to remove obstructions in the Pampanga River towards Manila Bay, they should instead dredge the heavily silted Sapang Cauayan and widen the San Esteban cut-off channel,” Lacap said.
