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Kimi Masa Tarumitzu and Masinloc Power
First Published: Reflections - Philippine Daily Inquirer Publication Date: 14th July 1992 Author's Name: Father Shay Cullen SSC My strongest impressions of Masinloc, Zambales were laid down with the setting sun in 1970. It was fiesta and the old Spanish Church was alive with people coming in for the evening prayers. The Sun gently lowered itself into the sea on the distant horizon. Its golden rays glinting on the expansive mud flats of the bay and reaching through the wide open doors of the church. Like a spot light the sunbeam, shaped by the rounded door, climbed the sanctuary steps and moved towards the center of the altar until it directly lit up the tabernacle in a magnificent sparkle of dancing light. It was a moment of awe and reverence, a beautiful harmony between nature and worship. Those golden sunbeams may soon be cut off and smothered by the building of another edifice dedicated to the worship of money. The planned coal burning power plant in beautiful Masinloc is of obsolete design, reportedly a secondhand throw off of another country and has to be primarily fired by imported coal. Masinloc or Zambales has no industry to be energized by such a power plant. It was chosen because it has a port and will puts the pollution 250 kilometers north west of Manila already choking to death on its existing levels. Manila industry will gain the benefit. This fishing and farming town will gain no benefit from the plant but they will be directly and dangerously effected by the choking fumes, soot and smoke that will engulf their seaside town if Kimi Masa Tarumitzu, president of the Asian Development Bank who is financing the project doesn't call it off. The people of Masinloc have informed themselves about the environmental pollution that this kind of antiquated plant can cause. They have looked into the toxic nightmare of Calaca 1 derail power plant in Laguna and it's contribution to the destruction of Laguna lake, they are shocked and dismayed by the fish loss in Balayan bay, they have seen the poisoning and drying up of artesian wells and they know about the spread of respiratory and other diseases inflicted on local populations by coal pants of this kind. They have not heard what NAPOCOR proposes to do with the potentially deadly slag heaps that will pile up and be forever a landslide hazard. In Wales several years ago one such heap moved after a an storm and engulfed an entire school burying all the children and teachers alive. I have just returned from a visit to the Rhur valley in Northern Germany . From the top of a mountain of coal slag (the waste product of burnt coal) I could see about ten power plants (most of them coal fired) and talked with government environmental officers. They left me in no doubt that coal plants cost many lives despite all the reassurances of the experts. How could Kimi Masa Tarumitzu, president of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) approve such an immoral and ill thought out project, as the Masinloc thermal plant? This project is just one example of where power and profits comes before people and places. NAPOCOR could Source energy from natural resources in a sustainable and environmentally correct way but there has to be intelligent and concerned research and planning. Presently Napocor can only source 18 %of the nations energy needs from such resources. Besides Napocor produces the most costly electricity in all of Asia. The people of Masinloc and Zambales don't want this power, the protest against it, they object strenuously that their health and that of their children is to be sacrificed and their land, sea and skies polluted and poisoned. How can it be morally right? They are starting an international letter campaign to Mr. Kimi Masa Tarumitzu and the donor governments of the ADB to get the project stopped. Bishop Deogracias and the entire clergy of Zambales province have taken their stand with the people and have denounced the project as being environmentally unsound and they spelled out the churches position that real development should be human development based on gospel values that build up the community - "a Kingdom of genuine peace, justice and harmony."
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