CLARK FREEPORT – The Department of Transportation has directed the contractor for its Subic-Clark Railway Project to find an “alternative solution” to spare 42 hectares of mangroves in the Subic freeport that will be adversely affected in its construction.
“We have to make sure that we are observing all the environmental requirements and safeguards and this mangrove situation or clash in the alignment is an instruction that we have already given to our contractor to explore for an alternative solution so that we can address the concerns involving the matters,” said Timothy John Batan, DOTr undersecretary for railways, in ANC’s Rundown program on Friday.
Earlier, Transportation Secretary Arthur P. Tugade was reported to have also instructed China Harbor, then project contractor, to build a logistics terminal away from the mangrove forest.
The P50-billion freight railway project aims to create a 70-kilometer-long logistics corridor connecting Subic Bay in Zambales and Clark in Pampanga, establishing thereby an industrial hub in the heart of Central Luzon that will draw in investments.
According to Batan, a “third consultation meeting” with stakeholders was held last June 17, whereby an agreement was reached that “there is a process, there is science, and there is engineering that needs to be utilized in order to address the situation.”
He said he assured stakeholders that the engineers and consultants involved in the project have had “vast experience” in balancing developmental objectives.
“It does not always have to be one sacrificing for another. There’s a lot of experience, there’s a lot of international best practice to draw from. There’s process, there’s environmental science, and there’s railway engineering that we can take in consideration so that the developmental, the socio-economic objectives of our investment in the Subic-Clark Railway Project can be realized for all without unduly harming our environment,” Batan stressed in the interview.
Save Subic Bay Mangroves
The danger to the mangroves posed by the Subic-Clark Railway project came to the fore with the appeals made by the Save Subic Bay Mangroves Coalition, a private group of residents and business leaders, to the project proponents led by the DOTr.
The 42 hectares of mangroves at issue are among the six patches of mangroves totaling 62 hectares forming the Subic Bay Freeport area’s natural resources protected by Presidential Proclamation No. 926 signed by then President Corazon Aquino in 1992.
The railway alignment will also through the Roosevelt protected landscapes, three ancestral domains and 37 villages in Bataan and Pampanga and the cities of Olongapo and Angeles onto to Clark Freeport. With ABS-CBN News
