We can vividly remember the Boracay Island of 30 years ago. It was a sleepy place where you could wander the windward side of the island all day long and see only the occasional windsurfer in the rough waters. Trash collection was done by local entrepreneurs, leading an old carabao pulling a wooden cart.
The drink of choice seemed to be a mango shake, which required a small generator be started to run the electric blender, breaking the tranquil silence. A sign might read “Ice Cold San Miguel Beer” but that was only if the ice had been delivered from Caticlan.
Most of the visitors were young people, primarily from Europe that might have a book titled Boracay on $5 a Day and who were determined to get that down to $2 a day. But that was fine since apart of the nightly festivities at the two popular bars, there was not much else to spend money on.
There were some more “expensive” resorts, including the foreign-owned one that built the first swimming pool on the island. Most, though, were nipa huts, such as the one owned by “Fred” Elizalde, the husband of the first Filipina prima ballerina Lisa Macuja-Elizalde. The property was managed by an ex-special forces soldier from South Africa who spent his afternoons and evenings drinking with the guests until—too drunk to walk—his Filipina girlfriend had a couple of the boys carry him to bed.
That was Boracay then and everything but the incredible sunset has changed.
However, even at that time there was growing concern over the degradation of the local environment. Occasionally during the year, a sudden algae bloom would turn the local waters murky with a “bad” color. Longtime residents that had watched this situation progress over the years were convinced it was because of untreated wastewater being dumped in the ocean.
Not much was done except to talk as no one was interested paying to mitigate the potential problem and local governments were really not interested in discussing anything negative about their “island paradise.”
Fast forward three decades and Boracay would be completely unrecognizable to anyone that had not been there during the intervening time. Further, the “potential problem” of 1988 is now a borderline disaster. That is always what happens when you let things go. It is a disgrace and a failure on the hands of every level of government from the island barangays of Balabag, Manoc-Manoc and Yapak to Malacañang.
It was bad enough that the small locally owned resorts ignored the problem but to have billion-peso corporations not to use their influence and money to stop this catastrophe is unforgiveable.
If cleaning up Boracay requires drastic measures even to the point of closing the island to tourism, then that is what should be done. For all the talk by former Department of Environment and Natural Resources secretaries about the environment, it was just that when it came to the tourism jewel of the Philippines.
While the Boracay Island Water Corp., a joint venture of the Ayala Corp. and the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority, is building a proper wastewater disposal system, it will not be island wide until 2022.
We do not have much sympathy for the resort owners, big or small. This is not something that happened overnight and all are responsible for the garbage and sewer water that is too pervasive on the island. Start cleaning up Boracay now.