SORSOGON CITY—A school ran by a religious congregation called on the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to intervene for the closure of a coconut-processing plant here following over a year of industrial smoke.
The Divine Healer Academy of Sorsogon was also prompted to seek the bishops’ mediation after Peter Paul Philippines Corp. failed to keep its word of easing the reeking smoke in the last 16 months, said Sis. Odelia B. Golloso, school directress and superior of the Sister Servants of the Divine Healer (SSDH).
“The plant began operation in March last year,” she said. “We started to smell the foul odor in April. By June, we started complaining.” Students and teachers experience headache, dry throat, eye irritation, gastric disturbance, and vomiting,” Golloso said. At times, the school was forced to suspend classes due to the unbearable stench enveloping the campus. The school, located in a retreat compound called El Retiro, is filled with awful smoke particularly between June and mid October, when the plant’s smoke is blown toward it, she said.
Aside from the smoke, the students are also disturbed by “a rumbling noise” that originates from the plant, Golloso said.
The school has a population of over 340 kinder, primary and secondary students and more than 20 teachers.
El Retiro in Barangay Cabid-An is separated from the plant only by a concrete fence topped with hog wire. Aside from the school, the compound holds an SSDH convent, a formation house, a mother house, and a Poor Claire Monastery.
SSDH arrived here in 1986, Golloso said. The school has been around since 2003.
The school and the religious community were not considered before and during the construction of the plant. El Retiro has earned the esteem of retreatants and families who get-together here for its ambience and solitude until the plant changed that reputation, she said. The company maintains that its plant operation abides by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’s (DENR) standard.
Quirino Panganiban, Peter Paul Philippines Corp. plant manager, said in a letter to Golloso dated October 3, 2014, that “the bunker fuel boiler was decommissioned on the first week of July 2014” which “might be the cause of the irritating smoke.”
He said that their “biomass boiler was designed based on the DENR standard” and it is “fueled by coco shell which is organic in nature.”
The plant also conducts a “24-hour spraying of organic smell repellant to all possible sources of unpleasant smell,” Panganiban said. Despite this, the students, teachers, school staff, nuns and monks still smell the foul odor of the industrial smoke, Golloso said. Thelma Engay, Divine Healer Academy of Sorsogon principal, like Golloso, is calling for the “closure or relocation of the plant.”
“We suffer almost half a year,” she said. The company had even attempted to bribe the school to loosen its stance, but it refused, Engay said. The school seeks nothing less than clean air, she said.
Esteven Garcia, a provincial agriculturist, expressed apprehension over the hazardous effect in case the smoke happens to be carbon monoxide.
His family living in Sea Breeze also complains of a vinegar-like foul odor when the wind blows toward their direction, he said.
Sea Breeze is over a kilometer from El Retiro and the most populous village in the city, Garcia said. Golloso is spearheading a campaign mounting more pressure on the DENR to order the closure of the plant, saying “they are supposed to protect the environment, not belch foul smoke in the area.”
Image credits: Oliver Samson