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'TOXIC' VESSELS BOUND FOR CEBU

by Carlito Pablo, Philippine Daily Inquirer

CEBU CITY, Philippines, 8 May 1999 -- ''FLOATING toxic coffins'' in the form of old ships from Japan are making their last port of call in Balamban, Cebu, resulting in air, land and water pollution, the Environmental Legal Assistance Center Inc. (Elac) yesterday said .

The old ships are exported to Cebu for shipbreaking by the Kambara and Aboitiz Metal Industries Inc. (K&A), a Filipino-Japanese partnership firm.

Materials like steel recovered from the ship are reprocessed for the nearby Tsuneishi Shipbuilding Corp. ''It is our experience that obsolete ships are contaminated with or contain asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), lead, tributyl tin (TBT), triphenyl tin (TPT) and other hazardous wastes,'' Elac said.

To protest the pollution, Cebu residents through Elac have filed a complaint with the Geneva-based secretariat of the 1989 Basel Convention.

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 that such wastes are properly disposed of.

In response to the complaint, the Basel Convention secretariat asked the Department of Environment and Natural Resources as well as the Environment Agency of Japan to look into the case.

The Basel secretariat told the DENR that it had received information that ''old ships from Japan that are being dismantled in the Cebu province generate wastes that could not be managed in an environmentally sound way.''

Today, a team of DENR experts is scheduled to inspect the 20-hectare shipbreaking plant situated between two rivers draining into the Tañon strait. Greenpeace will take part in the inspection.

''If there are indeed violations, we will not hesitate to issue notices of violation and a cease-and-desist order,'' said Geri Geronimo Sañez, chief of the hazardous waste management section of the Environmental Management Bureau.

Sañez, however, said that initial reports of the DENR showed that K&A was operating ''within the standards.''

The DENR office in Central Visayas had issued an environmental compliance certificate to K&A in 1994, allegedly without the benefit of a public hearing.

In their complaint, Elac said that on top of air and land contamination, Cebu's marine resources were being affected by the alleged improper disposal of wastes and oil spills.

''Already the fisherfolk report dwindling fish catches and are afraid that the shellfish found in the area may be contaminated,'' Elac said.

It said tests conducted by a group of independent Japanese experts in 1997 ''yielded alarming results'' on the high concentrations of TBT, TPT, lead and PCBs.

''The Visayas Sea, which embraces Cebu, Negros, Panay and other islands, supports thousands of municipal fisherfolk as well as large-scale and medium-scale commercial fisheries,'' the group said.

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