Road construction pollutes Tuba rivers
By March Fianza

TUBA, Benguet -- Excavated soil from a new road opening which connects to Asin road at Barangay Tadiangan here has literally covered about half of a portion of the Bucan river, a tributary to the touristic Asin river.

Messrs. Cortez Dagupen and Paquito Moreno, engineers from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’s environmental management bureau estimated the road excavation last week to be about 200 meters in length and about 2.5 meters wide.

They fear that with volumes of soil polluting the rivers, marine life has been destroyed and to a certain degree water qualitydownstream is not so healthy now as before the construction.

“We can not also discount the fact that animal and human existence has been distressed economically because Bucan and Asin rivers are sources of livelihood, aside from being the swimming paradise for both local and foreign tourists,” the EMB officials said.

Alarmed road-users, passers-by and local residents gave conflicting reports saying the earth-moving by heavy equipment of the Yubos construction is a “farm-to-market” road funded by a politician in Benguet. However, residents are not aware of any farm in that area.

Unidentified residents reported that the new road led to a proposed subdivision. But, Tadiangan Punong Barangay Zaldy Guileng said the road opening is a “private undertaking” by the contractor that leads to his lot property.

All these speculations however, were erased after DPWH-Benguet District Engineer Alberto N. Gahid told this writer that George Yubos, the son of the contractor informed him that the “road opening is a municipal project of Tuba.”

EMB Engr. Dagupen who saw the project immediately conducted site investigation and required the contractor to clean the area of loose soil of which the latter agreed.

He said Yubos signed a commitment to put in place mitigating measures to protect the river from pollution during their technical conference last month. In a follow-up inspection last week, Dagupen saw that the area was cleaned up.

“But still, heavy soil erosion was not prevented from spilling into the Bucan and Asin rivers and polluting the same because loose soil in the excavation were washed down by rainwater,” Dagupen observed.

When asked why the project started without the contractor securing first an environmental compliance certificate, the EMB engineers said ECCs are only required for earth-moving that is about 200 meters or more.

They said the problem with the government policy is that contractors whose projects are less than 200 meters in length but require earth-moving by heavy equipment, no longer report their activities to authorities because they are not required to do so.

“This is always the case, even if the earth-moving project is beside a river, as in the case Bucan and Asin rivers in Tuba,” Dagupen said.

Another technical conference will be conducted in the presence of the contractor where an environmental impact statement (EIS) will have to be agreed on.