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by Carlito Pablo, Philippine Daily Inquirer

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources said it had received information that the still unidentified bulk carrier had set sail from the Panama Canal.

It will be the 17th junk vessel to be serviced by K&A since it started operations in 1994.

K&A, a joint venture between the Aboitiz family and its Japanese partners, has been under fire from green groups opposed to the stripping and breaking up of old ships, which they say is environmentally unsound.

The DENR has warned K&A it cannot accept the ship without the necessary environmental clearance from both the Philippine government and the Environmental Protection Agency of Japan.

''If they (K&A) push through with it, that would serve as a a ground for us to issue a closure order," said Geri Geronimo Sanez, chief of the hazardous waste management section of the DENR -Environmental Management Bureau.

Sanez told the Inquirer in an interview that based on EMB records, K&A has been importing junk ships illegally since 1994, in violation of Republic Act 6969, or the law on toxic substances, and two other relevant DENR administrative orders.

''There should be prior notification to Japan's EPA which in turn will inform us [about the ship's arrival] to obtain our consent,'' Sanez said. ''That has not been done.''

Sanez said the law ordained that all hazardous wastes that cannot be managed by the importing country must be sent back to the exporting country which, in this case, would be Japan.

The wastes include, among others, asbestos used in the ship's piping network and PCBs, or the heat-resistant liquids found in transformers.

Environmentalists say these old and obsolete ships, the steel from which are recovered and reprocessed for shipbuilding, are ''floating toxic coffins'' containing hazardous wastes such as asbestos, polychlorinated biphynyls (PCBs), lead, tributyl tin (TBT) and triphenyl tin (TPT).

The shipbreaking plant, a 20-hectare facility located in the Aboitiz-owned Cebu Industrial Park in Balamban town, has also been accused of polluting the Tanon Strait between Cebu and Bohol.

Sanez said that an EMB inspection of the K&A facilities last Friday showed that asbestos was being stored in the plant's premises for eventual disposal in landfills.

Sanez also pointed out that K&A's sale of scrap materials to local buyers needed appropriate DENR permits but that this procedure was not being followed.

During a dialogue prior to the EMB inspection, K&A president Hitoshi Kono, a Japanese, said he was not aware if Japan had the technology for safe asbestos management.

There was no ship for breaking when Sanez and the EMB team made the inspection and collected water and other waste samples for laboratory testing.

Sanez said that during the dialogue K&A officials professed "innocence" of the EMB requirements.

Sanez said RA 6969, or the Toxic Hazardous Law, had been passed by the Philippine government to comply with the 1989 Basel Convention, the international agreement on the transboundary movement of toxic and hazardous wastes.

However, she said there had been a ''weak implementation'' of the law and its implementing guidelines in previous years.

Cebu residents have filed a complaint with the Convention's secretariat in Geneva against K&A's alleged polluting activities. In response, the Convention has asked the DENR and Japan's EPA to look into the case.

The Philippines and Japan are signatories to the Basel Convention which seeks to ensure that hazardous wastes are moved in an environmentally sound manner and are properly disposed of.