BAUANG, La Union—Environment Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez has been asked by resort owners in this province to stop processing applications for foreshore lease agreements (FLAs) on areas along and near the shoreline here, especially in Barangays Pugo and Pudoc, where domestic tourism is being revived after two decades in the doldrums.
The resort owners, led by former Provincial Board member Reynaldo Dulay, founding chairman of the La Union Hotel and Resort Association (LUHRA), aired the appeal in a letter to Lopez informing her that an influential group of real-estate brokers is using the FLAs to encroach on their titled beachfront properties, where they have a long time ago established tourism facilities.
Dulay said the continued processing of FLAs despite a temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by Judge Ferdinand Pe of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 33 in Bauang, La Union, “is posing a threat to the tourism industry, since initiatives taken to improve the facilities are snagged by forcible entries of a group of real-estate brokers that sporadically put up eyesore structures in the area.”
“It’s alarming because the FLAs are being used as instruments to land-grab titled properties,” said the former provincial official, himself a lawyer.
“The group of realtors are blatantly defying the court. They don’t attend scheduled hearings, but they continue building structures that tend to disrupt our upgrading initiatives,” Dulay and his fellow resort owners said in their letter to Lopez.
The resort owners informed Lopez at least 17 prime beachfront lots are feared to be affected by the issuance of FLAs to the group of real-estate brokers.
Earlier, the affected resort owners exposed in a case filed before the Office of the Ombudsman the alleged collusion between some top officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) regional office based in San Fernando City, La Union, and the realtors’ group, led by a certain Azalea Hidalgo. Known as a common-law wife of a retired military officer-turned-politician in the province, Hidalgo is believed to have deep connections in the Office of the Solicitor General and the Judiciary through an official of the Philippine Judges Association (PJA).
Dulay’s group, however, declined to identify the PJA official.
But Dulay and company accused before the antigraft body former DENR Regional Director Samuel Penafiel and two of his assistants, special investigator Graciano Boquiren and Santiago S. Santiago Jr., a geodetic engineer, for giving Hidalgo’s group “red-carpet treatment,” thus, the “deliberate encroachment on titled properties.”
In their complaint, Ann Paredes, Immaculada Concepcion Lim and Cherry Lyn Dy told the antigraft body the DENR officials connived to “fake a survey” to declare their titled properties as “underwater and salvage zone,” prompting the court to issue reversion/cancellation orders of the lot titles.
With the court’s reversion/cancellation order, the DENR then awarded FLAs to Hidalgo and her other cohorts. Recent findings by a task force created by DENR Regional Officer in Charge Paquito Moreno Jr., headed by lawyer Hipolito Salatan, the agency’s legal counsel in the region, revealed the properties of Paredes, Lim and Dy were not “underwater and salvage zone.”
But even with the TRO and the findings of the agency’s task force, the group of real-estate brokers continues to “put up structures on the shoreline areas near our properties,” the resort owners wrote Lopez.
Already, the group’s defiance has sparked a near-bloody clash between Hidalgo’s group and the resort owners, Dulay said. He added a quick-response team of the police diffused the tension.
The resort owners then appealed to the DENR chief to take immediate and necessary steps to prevent bloodshed, pointing out local authorities of this town have not lifted a finger to iron out the conflict.
“With due respect, the best recourse of Secretary Lopez is to hold a public hearing for all stakeholders and local public officials,” Dulay said.