Canatuan MMT: environment sentinels of Siocon

Members brave all conditions to closely monitor water quality in TVIRD’s host communities

Jalandoni, an environment officer of the Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) of Siocon, is a member of the Multi-partite Monitoring Team (MMT) that conducts the quarterly monitoring of water quality in rivers and streams around Siocon and in Canatuan, site of TVIRD’s copper-zinc mining operations.

Organized in 2004, the MMT is tasked to monitor TVIRD’s compliance with the conditions set in the Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) issued by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to the company. Aside from Jalandoni, the MMT is composed of representatives from the local governments of Siocon town and Zamboanga del Norte province, from Canatuan’s host barangay of Tabayo, from TVIRD’s host indigenous Subanon tribe, as well as from the regional offices of the Department of Health (DOH), the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB), and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB). Another member is Nilda Callora, TVIRD Canatuan’s Environment Manager.

Today is the last leg of the MMT’s three-day monitoring activity in Siocon. The MMT members had been busy going around town, particularly in Canatuan, and validating if TVIRD has been complying with ECC conditions, among them ensuring that water quality is always well within prescribed standards.

Frank Jardeleza, TVIRD Canatuan Environment Supervisor, had encountered the heavy rains earlier while taking samples in Lumot Creek, about two hours ride from Canatuan by motorcycle. As the group moves on to head back to Canatuan another downpour soaks the men riding on the pickup truck bed.

“It’s been raining in the last three days,” says Virna Baguio, an MGB chemist and team leader of MMT.

For several years now, Baguio has been leading MMT members in their quarterly environmental monitoring activities in Canatuan. She also leads the Team in making appropriate recommendations to TVIRD management if there are significant anomalies in the water samples.

The water samples are split and sent to a third party laboratory contracted by TVIRD and to Petro Lab, operated by the government’s Environment department, for separate water analyses, says Jardeleza.

“We commend TVIRD’s efforts to prevent the degradation of water quality in Lituban River, in the Pisawak spillway, and in the Lumot and Canatuan creeks,” says Baguio during the most recent exit conference between MMT with TVIRD management. Exit conferences are routine after each monitoring cycle.

Siegfried Bueser, the Siocon representative to the MMT, says the entry of TVIRD in Canatuan and the subsequent granting of the Mineral Production Sharing Agreement by the government to the company thwarted the further entry of illegal small-scale mining (SSM) operators in the area.
“There could easily have been thousands of SSMs here in the ‘90s. They used crude mining methods that posed a great danger to the environment,” he recalls. Fernandez, for his part, says he was part of an environmental team tasked by government to monitor the situation in Canatuan during those days. Both he and Bueser could hardly believe that throngs of people who made a mad rush for gold in Canatuan back then are now all gone.

“It was very difficult to control them and enforce safety measures,” Fernandez adds, referring to the tailings of the SSMs. “Today, with TVIRD, it’s much different. A big change indeed. A big change for the better.”

As the water samples, close to 60 bottles in all, are being tightly sealed, marked and put inside five wooden boxes ready for shipment to their respective destinations, the MMT members are again about to end their quarterly task. Jalandoni offers a prayer that all the members will remain safe as they head back to their quarters, and then back here again after three months. (Joey Ybanez)