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Under (Coal) Fire by Napocor

Nine years ago, a scientist from Japan’s powerful Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI) urged the Philippine government, after conducting an environmental investigation of the coal-fired thermal power plants (CFTPP) in Calaca, Batangas to stop the operations as a way of saving the villages from extinction. Visiting the site last week, 20 years after the first power plant opened in Calaca, Bulatlat.com found many folks have left their villages and those who remained are in dire need of immediate medical attention. Some of them are thinking of filing a class suit against the National Power Corporation (NPC) – the same agency that ruined their lives in the name of development.

bY Yna Soriano
Bulatlat.com

CALACA, Batangas - They wake up every morning of their lives gasping for breath. Their heads are burning, ear drums blowing, their nostrils clogged with black ashes, and their stomachs churning and acidic.

Around them, the formerly productive farms are turning into barren wastelands and the rivers and deep wells are gradually drying up. Fish catch in the nearby Balayan Bay is down by about 80 percent in recent years.

They are more than 5,000 families in five barangays surrounding the two coal-fired thermal power plants in Calaca, Batangas south of Manila who now believe that theirs is a forsaken part of the country. Nothing, they resigned, could be done to undo their fate.

Imagine this: Everyday for the past 17 years, the power plants have spewed black ash particles, emitted stinking odor and produced loud, almost ear-breaking noise.

The village folks were promised employment and progress which were their lesser evil in conceding to the project way back in 1990. Both promises are now gone with the wind, so to speak. There seems to be no one to run to now, nothing to hold on to, nowhere else to go for the Calaca villagers.

Job losses

In 1981, to lay the ground for the first coal-fired thermal power plant (CFTPP) in Batangas, a certain Mr. Avendaño, said to be the project manager of CFTPP, promised to the Calaca folks that “a member of every affected or displaced family in the site of the CFTPP construction shall be employed as regular worker when the plant starts in 1984.” Word for word, the remaining Calaca residents repeated to this reporter what the CFTPP official promised them.

In 1984, however, only about 200 of them were hired as stevedores and on contractual basis. One of those hired was Robert Garcia, 49, resident of Barangay (village) Dacanlao in Calaca (site of the CFTPP).

“Apart from us were about a thousand regular workers and office-based employees in the CFTPP who were non-Calaca residents,” he said in a recent interview.

Garcia and the other stevedores were first hired by an agency managed by a former town councilor, Jaime Casanova. The private agency then transacted with the National Power Corporation (NPC) which runs the CFTPP.

According to Garcia, the NPC employed the pool of workers belonging to Casanova’s agency on condition that the workers will renew their contract per year and they will not organize any union or engage in strikes. After 17 years, some of the stevedores, including Garcia, are still with CFTPP but have never been regularized or promoted.

“Wala kaming magawa dahil kahit ayaw naming pumayag, sapilitan kaming ginagawang contractual. Nagtatrabaho kami tapos pag sahuran nila tinityempo, kailangang pumirma muna kami sa kontrata, para makuha ang aming sahod. Ang laman ng kontrata ay pwedeng pinapag-leave ka muna o kaya’y niri-renew ka (There was nothing we could do as we were forced to be made as contractual. On pay day, we were made to sign a paper first before we could receive our salary. The contract allows you to take a leave or your job renewed.),” Garcia said.

Sometimes there is no work for three months because the contractual worker is relieved by another under the CFTPP’s system of work rotation. There are a few jobs for so many hopefuls and you’re forced to accept management terms unless you want to lose your contract, Garcia said.

But the worst is yet to happen this year.

Last month, the CFTPP gates were padlocked while the power bill was being deliberated in the House. Garcia and the rest of the stevedores - all from Calaca natives - were told that the ratification of the Omnibus Power Reform Act means new management and personnel.

They need not wait for the law to take effect, however. Recently, the CFTPP management laid off many workers – all were natives of Calaca.

Only more pollution

“Kumakain pa rin kami sa loob ng kulambo para mabawasan ang abo na dadapo sa aming pagkain (We still take our meals under the mosquito net to prevent the ash from falling on our food),” said residents of Barangay San Rafael, Quisumbing, Pag-asa and Baclaran - the villages surrounding the CFTPP.

In the early 1980s, their predicament was widely publicized as militant groups exposed the hazards of coal-based technologies, known to be the world’s dirtiest. Seventeen years after, however, the cycle of industrial pollution continues and the people’s cries for justice remain unheeded - muffled by the noise and smog of the CFTPP’s daily operations.

Barangay Baclaran chair Amelia De Castro, in an interview, said that three in every 20 households in her community are afflicted with serious respiratory illnesses while almost everybody suffers from constant headaches and stomach pains. Almost all children are asthmatic.

De Castro claims that in summer, the stink coming from the power plants is like “a hundred tires being burned” because the coal stocks and wastes are dry. She, herself, complains of difficulty in breathing and clogging nostrils every morning.

The village chieftain explains, however, that the CFTPP management would immediately take action if barangay residents complain about the bad odor, explosion-like noise and clouds of dust originating from the power plants.

But in random interviews, some residents said that it’s no use complaining about the daily pollution in their villages anymore. The industrial pollution has become part of their daily lives and seemingly, a state of things in this remote and other bucolic corner of Batangas.

17 years

Eleven years ago, an environmental investigative mission led by the non-government organization Center for Environmental Concerns (CEC) and jointly sponsored by three civic groups in Batangas, was conducted in Calaca.

The mission noted that the canopy of coal dust from the first plant covered the four surrounding barangays, forcing people to eat under smaller canopies - mosquito nets - with their dishes covered by pails soaked with water to keep off dust.

The liquid waste emission from the plant’s tailings pond is a possible cause of the water problem of the fishing communities, the CEC report said.

As early as 1990, Calaca folks had complained of getting less and less water from their deep wells and that the water had become salty a few years after the CFTPP operations began.

The coal dust and liquid wastes were also seen as the likely cause of fishing and agricultural problems besetting the villages around CFTPP.

In Bgy. San Rafael, for example, farmlands have lost their fertility, what with the scarce water becoming hazardous to use. The nearby river has also been used as a plant waste disposal, depriving farmers of irrigation. The same river is suspected of causing gastro-intestinal diseases in farm animals, the mission report found. Fish catch in fishing grounds had also dwindled.

In 1992, Tai Harada, a chemist at the National Chemical Laboratory for Industry of Japan’s powerful Ministry of Trade and Industry, initiated a separate investigation. His four-day investigation at the CFTPP site was led by 25 Japanese and Filipino scientists and environmentalists.

That year, Harada said that the “smallest amount of pollution could accumulate in 10 years to levels dangerous to human beings, plants and animals.” The effects of the 300-megawatt plant are visible as far as 10 kilometers away, he also said.

“The only way to curb pollution from the CFTPP is to stop its operation,” recommended Harada.

Recent ocular inspection by Bulatlat.com proved the unabated pollution cycle. All the threats and dangers hypothesized in the 1990 and 1992 environmental missions have become dirty and stinking realities in the years following.

Lessons learned

In random interviews, Calaca folks expressed regret for giving up their farms 20 years ago to the CFTPP management. The environmental and social costs have outweighed the employment opportunities and other self-serving “developments” that the CFTPP promised to implement in the town.

Isidro delos Reyes, Bgy. Dacanlao councilor, could only sigh and comment, “Dapat matuto na ang mga kababayan natin sa aming karanasan. Tingnan ninyo, nasira na nga ang mga bukid at ilog namin, pati hangin, nasira na’t dumumi, nawalan pa ng trabaho ang mga taga-rito (People should learn from our sad experience. Look, our farms and rivers are gone. We lost not only the air we breathe but also our jobs.).” Bulatlat.com

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