Environmental groups on Thursday welcomed the plan to stop quarry operations in Rizal province, which, they said, is a major cause of environmental degradation that trigger landslides and flashfloods in the area.
Noli Abinales, chairman of Buklod Tao, a community group based in San Mateo, Rizal, supported the call of Marikina Mayor Marcelino Teodoro to stop all quarry operations, particularly in the Upper Marikina River Basin Protected Landscape and its surrounding areas.
The group issued the statement after Environment Secretary Roy A. Cimatu ordered to suspend all quarrying activities in Rodriguez and San Mateo, after Ondoy-like floods hit these disaster-prone towns in Rizal, and the nearby city of Marikina.
“We have again witnessed nature’s wrath as raging waters damaged homes and besieged communities with mud and garbage. The Ondoy-like tragedy came as no surprise given the steady obliteration of the Marikina watershed and the Sierra Madre by quarrying and other detrimental activities such as waste dumping,” Abinales said in a news statement.
“Stopping quarrying operations is a critical policy that has to be enforced. This has to be supplemented by other measures that will disallow reckless land conversion that is eating up farms and forests in this bastion of biodiversity,” he added.
Martin Francisco, chairman of the Save Sierra Madre Environmental Institute (SSMEI), for his part, said all destructive activities in Sierra Madre should be stopped. He said what happened in Rizal, Bulacan and Metro Manila should be a reminder of what can happen when Ondoy struck in 2009.
Fr. Pete Montallana, chairman of the Save Sierra Madre Network Alliance (SSMNA), meanwhile, pressed for the protection of the fragile forests of the Sierra Madre to enable the biodiversity-rich mountain range to protect Luzon from severe weather disturbances.
“Sierra Madre’s capacity to shield our communities from storms, rains and floods have been weakened by damaging human activities. To enable her to protect us, decisive action is needed to put an end to activities that defile and destroy the Sierra Madre such as the unchecked logging and quarrying, as well as projects that destroy the forest biodiversity and violate the indigenous people’s rights,” he said.
“We need to stop the logging, mining, quarrying and dumping activities in the Sierra Madre to save her from unabated destruction, which is the root cause of the damaging floods,” he stressed.
Daniel Alejandre, Zero Waste Campaigner of EcoWaste Coalition, further emphasized the need to protect the Sierra Madre from garbage disposal activities that contribute to its environmental degradation.
“Waste prevention and reduction are very much needed to cut the volume of garbage sent to dump sites and landfills that are regrettably sited in the Sierra Madre. The enforcement of ecological solid waste management, as embodied in R.A. 9003, especially in cities and towns that haul their garbage to the Sierra Madre is essential if we are to stop its further degradation due to dumping, quarrying and other destructive activities,” he said.