Airport solution tests resilience of Bulacan residents

Up in the air or deep into the floods?

MANILA, Philippines — Flooding during typhoons is a fact of life for residents of Barangay Taliptip, a small fishing village in Bulacan.

“Sanay na naman kami. Pero syempre, sa kada bagyo o kalamidad na dumating, nandun pa rin ang pangamba (We are used to this. But of course, for every typhoon and calamity that comes, the fear is still there),” said Michael Ramos, Taliptip’s barangay captain.

Ramos’ fear became Taliptip residents’ reality when Super Typhoon Carina inundated portions of Metro Manila and Central and Southern Luzon last July. No one expected what unfolded before their eyes.

“We experienced very high levels of floodwaters. It looks like it’s worse compared to last year. The water reached up to my neck,” recalled Julie de la Cruz, a resident of Taliptip.

More than 800 Taliptip residents were forced to evacuate at the nearby public school at the peak of Carina’s onslaught, worse than the usual knee-level flooding.

Residents blame the severe flooding in the area to the construction of the multi-billion peso New Manila International Airport being built in Barangays Taliptip and Bambang in Bulakan, Bulacan.

San Miguel Corp. (SMC), the proponent of the new airport project, debunked this, stating that even before it commenced construction activities, the province of Bulacan has been one of the top 10 flood-prone areas in the country, according to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). Bulakan is among the flood-prone towns of the province.

This has led SMC to initiate dredging and river cleanup activities early on into the project.

Still, local civil society organizations and communities have raised concerns over the new airport and its impact on the environment and displaced residents.

SMC is well aware of the concerns and opposition to the airport project. It has outlined steps that need to be taken to mitigate the impact of construction activities and airport operations later on, most notably the impact on the livelihood of dislocated residents and the environment.

The project has been approved by the National Economic and Development Authority Board and has been issued an Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) by the DENR in 2021.

SMC, through its subsidiary San Miguel Aerocity Inc., is undertaking the 2,565-hectare airport project on a build-operate-transfer arrangement. Estimated at P735 billion, the new airport will have four parallel runways and state-of-the-art terminals that could cater to as much as 100 million passengers yearly.

Ramon Ang, SMC chairman and CEO, said the project would be funded through a European credit institution.

Land development work in the site started in 2021 and about 80 percent of the land filling has been completed. Construction of the airport is expected to commence by mid-2025.

Solution to the problem

The new airport is the government’s answer to the congestion of the 40-year-old Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

An SMC-led consortium, New NAIA Infrastructure Corp., has recently taken over the operations of NAIA.

Space is scarce since the 650-hectare property where the NAIA sits is surrounded by residential and commercial establishments, which would be problematic and costly for the government to expropriate.

A 2014 study by the Japan International Cooperation Agency concluded that Sangley Point Airport in Cavite would be an ideal site for a new main gateway.

But Capt. Manuel Antonio Tamayo, Undersecretary for Aviation at the Department of Transportation during the Duterte administration and now director-general of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, said this would entail the reclamation of 2,000 hectares of land off the coast of Manila Bay, which would be more expensive for the government or the private firm taking on the project.

Although the site preparation of the Bulacan airport involves land filling, SMC stressed that this is not reclamation since these are titled lands.

The titled lands, mostly converted into fishponds before the airport construction, were acquired in 2019.

Tamayo said Bulacan is ideal as far as aviation is concerned due to its proximity to the sea and the absence of surrounding mountains, which makes landing and take-off of aircraft safer. Its terrain is flat and its accessibility to Metro Manila will make it a boon for those living and working at the national capital, he added.

Compromises

But the new airport’s promise is not without tradeoffs.

Narod Eco, a geoscientist who has done extensive research on the subsidence of Manila Bay area, raised concerns.

He said the new airport is right smack at the northern coast of Manila Bay in Bulacan where the land is made up of clay and sand. When an earthquake strikes, this may transform into a liquid-like substance that could lead to the destruction of structures above it.

There is also the danger of subsidence or sinking, according to academic research papers.

The location of the airport blocks the river delta of the Meycauayan River System, which causes severe flooding in the communities because water is unable to drain into the sea.

Adding to the problem is the destruction of hundreds of mangroves, which could have shielded Barangay Taliptip and surrounding areas from high tide, not to mention the loss of habitat of various species.

“It takes time for the floodwaters to recede because the river where it is supposed to drain is no longer there,” said Eco.

Eco is puzzled why the DENR, even after studying reclamation projects in Manila Bay, seemed to lack clear-cut standards on the extent of environmental degradation or risks that it would allow for a project to push through.

“The EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) system needs to be checked. One of the actionable reforms is on the part of public consultations, that there must be more weight on social acceptance of the project. If the affected community doesn’t want it, the project should not push through,” he said.

Taliptip’s barangay captain agreed, claiming that there was no honest-to-goodness public consultation.

“There was no public hearing. The people were not informed,” said Ramos.

However, according to the DENR, the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) did a careful study of the proposal before granting the ECC.

“There were studies done including the EGGAR (Engineering, Geologic and Geohazard Assessment Report), the circulation of water in the area and the overall impact of human activities that would be taking place there once the airport is already completed,” said Martin Despi, DENR-EMB Region 3 regional director.

For his part, Tamayo said: “I’m aware of the flooding problem. What I know is they (SMC) have been dredging.”

Impact of change

Some 350 dislocated households were given cash amounting to P250,000 to P500,000 to enable them to relocate.

Ramos said many of them were relocated within Taliptip, while others moved to other parts of Bulacan or to other provinces. While some families opted to build new homes, others spent the money for rent, which only lasted them for several months, he added.

Fisherfolk in the area were given construction jobs at the airport but some said they earn less than the P1,000 to P4,000 they used to generate daily from fishing.

Work has stopped at the project site following the government’s halt order on reclamation projects, which also put the brakes on SMC’s quarrying activities in Tanza, Cavite, the source of panambak or backfill for the airport construction.

“Work is good if it is continuous. But it only lasted for a while. It was gone after about a year,” said Arman Tallara, a fisherman and a Taliptip resident.

Ramos, the barangay captain, whose family is also into fishing, is greatly affected by the airport project.

He used to oversee more than 200 hectares of fishpond, but this was reduced by half because of SMC’s buying spree of properties in the area.

The massive reduction of fishing grounds in the area could affect the entire supply of bangus (milkfish) in the country.

Ramos’ family grows fish fry imported from Indonesia. The fingerlings are then sold to other fishpond owners who grow full-sized bangus at the Laguna de Bay.

“It would be a domino effect once the fishponds are gone. Laguna Lake is the number one largest supplier of bangus,” he said.

Rectifications

Well aware of the concerns regarding the project, SMC, in an 85-page Environmental Impact and Social Assessment submitted to the DENR, took note of the composition of the land where the airport will be erected. It stated that it will employ methods to target the clayey layers and carry out means to prevent these from turning into liquid when earthquake strikes.

SMC said it would also do liquefaction analysis in riverbanks to determine the susceptibility to ground failure, which could damage foundations and other structures.

The DENR required SMC to institute measures to address flooding as stated in the ECC.

Ang stressed that the airport itself is flood-free, and its offsite area would be expanded as part of flood mitigation given the worsening flooding brought about by changing weather patterns.

Siltation in the river is another problem, hence the company’s initiative to conduct dredging to expand water-carrying capacity.

“We were able to clean and haul about seven million tons of garbage. Nobody has done that, even the government in the last seven years,” said Ang.

SMC has also created a 40-hectare sanctuary where it planted mangroves to provide habitat for certain species of fish and migratory birds.

DENR’s Despi said this was meant to offset the loss of some 50 hectares of mangrove forest since the company needed to make up for the environmental destruction as a result of the project.

SMC has also embarked on livelihood programs to aid affected residents. Some were given San Miguel products to sell, while others were trained to do seafood processing. The residents were also promised work as soon as airport operations commenced.

But Ramos said most of the fisherfolk may not even qualify for jobs since many of them were not able to finish school, dropping out as soon as they started earning from fishing by the age of 10.

Despi said the DENR is doing its quarterly monitoring to see if SMC is compliant with the commitments, mitigating measures and other requirements as indicated in the ECC, counting among them regular checking of geotechnical conditions and management of waste and noise pollution.

He said the agency would have to mandate the SMC to do things outside of the stipulations in the ECC if needed, given the changing economic and environmental conditions.

This story was produced through a grant from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network through the Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University.

Gerard dela Pena is a senior correspondent at News5 covering business and transportation. He is a past president of the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines.