A Familiar Disaster: In Benguet Town, the Ground Shakes and Houses Disappear

Published on June 20, 2009

MGB recommended that water runoff be diverted from the slide area; the tension cracks “sealed” even with clay to prevent water seepage; buildings be demolished; rerouting of the road to Lepanto and the dammed water carefully removed to prevent flashfloods.

Independent Investigation

Some, however, believe that mining had something to do with the disaster.

Councilor William Mendoza said the council passed five resolutions in its emergency session Monday. One of these is the request for an independent investigation by groups other than the mining company and the government.

Wallang and other miners interviewed by Nordis along Aurora Street all point to the alleged underground copper mine tunnels Bonanza 1030 to 1070 reportedly abandoned when the company shifted to gold operations in the late 1980′s.

“Old miners tell us there are mine tunnels underneath,” one miner said.

An MNHS alumnus, Chester Tuazon, traced the very fast environmental deterioration of Mankayan, Sapid, Poblacion, Colalo and Poblacion, to the more than six-decade mining operations by Lepanto.

“Lepanto claims to be a model of responsible mining, but the devastation it has caused in Mankayan belies such claim,” said Tuazon, who is also a member of the local Anakbayan chapter. The company’s operations caused the sinking of many areas and the siltation of the Abra River from its tailings ponds upstream of the river, Tuazon said.

In a statement, the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) said the erosion and continuous sinking in the community of Aurora Street, in Barangay Sapid, Mankayan is the latest and the worst case of land subsidence that has occurred in the municipality.

Lepanto and the MGB, it said, “attributed these environmental calamities to naturally occurring events such as movements of fault lines and even heaven’s will. But the indigenous communities
know for a fact that it is the years of underground bulk mining that has caused the land subsidence and sinking and these are only hastened by natural phenomena such as strong rains and typhoons.”

Previous Incidents

The National Institute of Geological Sciences (NIGS) of the University of the Philippines, in an investigation report it made on the Colalo lanslide in July 1999, had cited major subsidence threats in the Poblacion, Colalo and Sapid areas.

“The subsidence in Mankayan was initially reported by residents in 1972,” the NIGS report said, quoting a similar report in 1984.

MCS was one of the two subsidence sites cited in a NIGS report in 1976. The other is some 300 meters to its southwest along Magambang Creek. MNHS and a large part of Aurora Street were also reported to be sinking.

That year, NIGS observed some cracks running some 80 meters along Aurora Street. It also reported tilted railings, vertically translated trees, cracked foundations and the sagging rooftops of several houses. These are among the conspicuous pieces of evidence of the subsidence along said road, it said.

Evacuation

“People’s lives are in danger. They should vacate the place immediately,” Gov. Nestor B. Fongwan told officials here, referring to the remaining houses near the Aurora sinkhole in Barangay Sapid.

Fongwan, in a meeting with teachers, community leaders and town officials here Wednesday, advised Mankayan people to be on alert amid the continuing ground movement that can be aggravated by continuous downpour.

Fongwan said the town mayor should order the evacuation of all people living near the subsidence area.

Despite the fear of another collapse, MNHS students keep going to school. One of them, Novie Calapiao, 16, a volleyball athlete to the regional athletic meet, laments that the oval will no longer be there. “We will have no place for practice,” she said.

Jane Fagyan, also 16, said she could not give up MNHS to the sinkhole.

In the meantime, while government officials and private groups prepare to take steps to mitigate the effects of large-scale ground subsidence, landslides and erosion in the area, Lepanto continues its large-scale mining operations for gold. (Northern Dispatch / bulatlat.com)

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