The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number

During the public hearing held Sept. 2 at the covered court of the Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Region 10 office, a resident of one of the barangays where a bioethanol plant is proposed to be constructed muttered something against one of the presentors, apparently not understanding how pollution from the plant could affect the drinking water of the city.

Which is really quite understandable, considering the "benefits" the proposed plant would be bringing to the impoverished barangays of Mambuaya and Bayanga, as their barangay chairmen fully supported the project and exhorted the other stakeholders present to drop their objections to it.

Unfortunately, in cases like this where the democratic tenet of "the greatest good for the greatest number" would be the crucial factor, the health and well-being of the greater portion of Cagayan de Oro´s residents who live downstream of the Monigue River would always hold sway over the perceived economic benefits such a plant would bring to the residents of the two highland barangays.

Even granting the highly-touted "zero-waste technology" Alcantara & Sons Consolidated Resources (ACR) works, the possibility of even only one accident in the magnitude of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in the Ukraine or the Bhopal gas tragedy in India to kill scores of residents and render the surrounding environment uninhabitable is a stark reality everyone has to face.

For instance, the plume from the Chernobyl nuclear explosion drifted over extensive parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern, Western and Northern Europe, with nuclear rain as far as Ireland. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people.

The countries of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have been burdened with the continuing and substantial decontamination and health care costs of the Chernobyl accident. It is difficult to accurately quantify the number of deaths caused by the events at Chernobyl as over time it becomes difficult to determine whether a death was caused by exposure to radiation.

The 2005 report prepared by the Chernobyl Forum, led by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and World Health Organization (WHO), attributed 56 direct deaths (47 accident workers, and nine children with thyroid cancer), and estimated that there may be 4,000 extra cancer deaths among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed people. Although the majority of affected areas are now considered safe for settlement and economic activity, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and certain limited areas remain off limits 23 years after the disaster.

A more likely and comparable disaster would be the Bhopal disaster or gas tragedy an industrial disaster that took place at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh at midnight on 3 December 1984. The plant released an estimated 42 tons of toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas, exposing more than 500,000 people to MIC and other chemicals. The first official immediate death toll was 2,259. The government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release. Others estimate 8,000-10,000 died within 72 hours and 25,000 have since died from gas-related diseases.

But more likely, the disaster residents would most likely have to deal with should the bioethanol plant push through in its intended site would be the smell. This is the sad aftermath of the country´s first bioethanol plant, San Carlos Bioenergy, Inc. in San Carlos City, Negros Occidental. An integrated ethanol distillery and power cogeneration plant at the San Carlos Agro-Industrial Economic Zone, it is the first in Southeast Asia and started operations only last January.

In her June 16, 2009 story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Carla P. Gomez of Inquirer Visayas wrote about how complaints about the "smell like human waste" coming from the waste water treatment lagoon came from as far as Calatrave, 10 kms. and Taboso, 30 kms. away, respectively. Similarly, neighbors of the Phil. Agro-Industrial Corp. which has been operating a cassava processing plant in nearby Baungon, Bukidnon have complained about a similar odor for 25 years now although as Bgy. Head Agustin Bagongon describes it, "no one was ever known to have died from the smell."

Nonetheless, should a similar smell drift down to the eleven residential subdivisions of Uptown Cagayan de Oro from the bioethanol plant, this is bound to raise a hue and cry from the approximately 3,000 households who now reside there the likes of which Kapitan Bagongon would wish he never heard.

Perhaps the most relevant issue raised regarding this project was the effect of the plant´s effluents on Cagayan de Oro City´s groundwater. If even minute portions of the cyanide which is a byproduct of the bioethanol make it to the city´s aquifers, a major portion of the population depending on the Cagayan de Oro Water Disrict would be poisoned.

Fortunately, Cagayan de Oro enjoys the security of being the only city in the country today with a bulk water facility it can fall back to just in case a disaster befalls our aquifers and groundwater resources.

Already being abstracted at an increasing rate by the multiple housing and industrial clusters which helped make Region X the fastest growing regional economy in the country in 2008, effluents from the bioethanol plant on top of saltwater intrusion which has already started in seven of the city´s coastal barangays would permanently render our rapidly depleting aquifers unusable for succeeding generations.

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