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Friday, March 29, 2024

Mindoro folk wary of ‘La Niña’

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NAUJAN, Oriental Mindoro—Island folk in this province are bracing for the coming of “La Niña” as they feared it would bring the same widespread  destruction they experienced at the onslaught of Super Typhoon “Nona” in December last year.

The people’s fear stems from release this month of a controversial result of an investigation conducted by Task Force Iwas-Baha absolving the ongoing construction of a mini-hydro power project in the highlands of this municipality.

In clearing the Sta. Clara International Corp., the probe body instead blamed “climate change” and the “upstream activities” of mountain dwellers, including Mangyans, as the culprits behind the P4.5 billion  worth of destruction wrought by Super Typhoon “Nona.”

Oriental Mindoro Gov. Alfonso V. Umali Jr. formed the multi-partite probe body to find out persistent allegations by “Nona” victims that the blasting activities in the construction site of the SCIC had something to do with “heavy floodings and the cascades of big boulders and rocks rolling down from the mountain tops of Catuiran River,” in Naujan town.

The SCIC is the owner of the P1.2-billion eight-megawatt Lower Catuiran Mini-Hydro Power Project in its more than 3,000-hectare project site in mountainous forest lands of sitio Arangin, Bgy. Malvar, this town.

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Super Typhoon “Nona” left “enormous damage” to agriculture, infrastructures, environment and power installations with an estimated cost placed at P4.5 billion, including 13 deaths.

The task force said, in its 27-page report, the upstream activities of upland dwellers, like “kaingin-making, excessive gathering of forest resources especially those with unique characteristics, timber poaching and gold panning, which are destructive activities, to some extent had aggravated the effects of Typhoon “Nona.””

Residents in the farming  villages hemming in the SCIC project site rejected the report, saying it was “biased to favor Sta. Clara” because the traditional slash-and-burn method of agriculture or “kaingin farming” had been stopped since it was banned by the government many years ago.

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