Church opposes P2.1-B bioethanol plant in Cagayan de Oro

MANILA, Philippines — The Roman Catholic Church in Cagayan de Oro joined the opposition to the transfer of a P2.1-billion bio-ethanol plant to the city's watershed area. Archdiocese social action director Fr. Narciso Cabantan Jr. said the project threatens to "destroy us all, not only our environment." "Can we exchange two or three years of employment of a few residents of Bayanga and Mambuaya for the long-term destruction it will cause to us and our descendants?" he asked in an article on the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines website (www.cbcpnews.com). He issued the statement after attending a public hearing in Bayanga village last week, representing Cagayan de Oro Archbishop Antonio Ledesma. The proposed bio-ethanol plant, the first in Northern Mindanao, is due to start commercial operations early 2011, according to Tomas Alcantara, chairman of the Alcantara Group of Companies. It has a targeted capacity of about 100,000 liters per day, and will fill an expected surge in demand for alternative fuels. The group said it hopes to capitalize on the anticipated growth in demand for fuel with the mandatory five percent blend of bio-ethanol by May 2009. But environmentalist groups here have opposed the project, calling it a "good idea in a wrong location." The bio-ethanol plant, as proposed, will be built on a 16-hectare area in Bayanga and Mambuaya, two hinterland villages that have been identified as part of the Iponan watershed. This 16-hectare area is part of the 24 hectares in Bayanga and Mambuaya that the City Council had re-classified into agro-industrial from agricultural through an ordinance passed Jan. 7, 2008. Bayanga and Mambuaya villages are in the middle of one of the country's few remaining ecologically diverse environments. "The processing plant will gravely compete with sufficiency, and endanger the quality of the local water supply, and may result to marginalization of their basic need," said the Kagay-an Watershed Alliance (Kawal), a group composed of professionals, entrepreneurs and educators who live, own farms or manage nature-oriented operations in Bayanga, Mambuaya and environs. And opening these two barangays to industrial corporations jeopardizes the health of the Cagayan de Oro river. Barangay Mambuaya hosts the city's 12-kilometer white water rafting course, now being hailed as the Philippines' and Asia's whitewater rafting capital. Cabantan added the wastewater and other effluents of the plant threaten to contaminate the Munigi River and eventually the Cagayan de Oro River. The Cagayan de Oro River is one of the rivers draining the northern central part of the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. - GMANews.TV