DESPOILER AND degrader. Of the very environment where it sited itself.
That is what the S&R Pampanga mall – albeit still in mid-construction – is fast turning out to be.
Last week, frenzied cries were raised by green groups over the disappearance of four big acacia trees in the S&R construction site.
One Alex Peralta, purported project manager of S&R Pampanga, was reported in the media as saying the trees were not cut but earth-balled and transferred to the back of the mall.
Peralta furthered that: a) the trees obstructed the view of the mall and therefore needed to be removed; b) the earth-balling was done last September 17 under the supervision of a team from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources; and c) at the site was hung a streamer informing the public about the transfer of the trees.
Peralta admitted that environmental groups and the media were not invited to witness the earth-balling.
Contrary to what has become de rigueur whenever trees are removed hereabouts, coming in the wake of the damnations heaped on government agencies arising from the massacre of trees along MacArthur Highway more than a year or so ago.
There was also no streamer or whatever notice placed at the S&R site informing the public of the transfer of the trees. Else, the Save the Trees Coalition as well as the ever-alert-to-tree-cutting media would have come en masse to the site to monitor and document the transfer.
I found the least rhyme, and absolutely no reason in Peralta’s unreason for taking out the four acacia trees – “they obstructed the view of the mall.”
Landscape architects will be the first to bat for the retention of a number of trees on the frontage of edifices as they provide the green, the living element, to the usually cold concrete and steel buildings.
Feng shui experts will be the last to have the trees removed, sources as they are of chi, of positive energy that makes the place pulsate with…well, life.
This Peralta needs some knocking, er, some environmental sense knocked into him. As, indeed, S&R too.
Just last June, at the height of Typhoon Falcon, the Jose Abad Santos Avenue, still better known as Gapan-San Fernando-Olongapo Road, turned into a roiling sea. Maybe some hyperbole there, but floodwaters actually rose to some three feet, rendering the highway impassable even to trucks and buses for a time.
That I know for sure, getting out of my old SUV and wading through the flood to take photographs. And my son stranded at SM City Pampanga, forced to hole in for the night at a friend’s pad in Mexico.
The cause of the flooding – fingered by the city government, the Department of Public Works and Highways and businessmen in the area – was none other than the construction of the S&R mall.
The inspection of the area led by Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez himself, DPWH engineers, and the city’s top business executives, yielded but one finding: S&R’s “perimeter fence went beyond the allowable five-kilometer right of way from JASA… and enclosed the public drainage system, which had been clogged with spoils from the mall’s construction, causing deep flooding along the road.”
The S&R contractor “clearly violated provisions” in its permit, so the inspection report concluded.
Public Works Regional Director Jun Molano went further as to say that “fencing the drainage systems was a violation that may lead to the revocation and suspension of (S&R construction) permit…
It would be very difficult for us to do maintenance works if our drainage systems are fenced. The fences must be dismantled.”
The city business leaders even contemplated of filing charges against the S&R contractor for damages, if not opportunities lost rising out of the heavy flooding.
Killer of trees. Cause of floods.
It won’t do good for S&R to start doing business in the City of San Fernando with those damnations as its own corporate identities.
Yeah, S&R could very well stand for Scourge and Ravage.
