Bills against pollution doesn't go far enough

Philippine Daily Inquirer

A national law to regulate noise pollution is long overdue. House Bill 7072 authored by Reps. Dato Arroyo, Ferdinand Martin Romualdez et al. could be a step in the right direction, but by limiting its scope to cover only noisy car engines and the blowing of horns in “non-commercial districts,” its authors stopped short of crafting an encompassing and effective law.

Haven’t these lawmakers noticed that, more than automobiles, most of which are equipped with regulation exhaust/muffler systems, the noisier vehicles that pass through non-commercial or residential areas are tricycles, motorcycles and jeepneys with straight exhaust pipes? And if the real intent of the law is to safeguard the general health and well-being of residents in non-commercial districts, then why have its authors left out other sources of noise pollution? Some of these are:

1. Backyard/home businesses producing more than normal noise like metal fabrication shops, etc.;

2. Fighting cocks and other noisy animals (including dogs);

3. Street parties and wakes where people create noise;

4. Karaoke singing and other forms of amplified sound (whether outside or within the bounds of one’s property) above the ambient noise level or that “disturbs” or causes discomfort or annoyance to others beyond one’s property line;

5. Playing of loud music inside restaurants, stores and malls which make normal conversation impossible.
Finally, why limit the prohibition to the period from 8 p.m. till 8 a.m.? Noise pollution is still noise pollution between 8:01 a.m. and 7:59 p.m.

Noise pollution, like air pollution, causes slow death. It is like assault with a deadly weapon. It is a crime against life. Our lawmakers should get real.

—JOEY K. MONTALVO,
Nordson Green Earth Foundation,
115 Paseo de Roxas,
Bel Air IV, Makati City
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In connection with the above news, many residents of Baranggay Central I, Palompon, Leyte were so happy to learn that finally the BLITZ GRILL Beer and Grill located at Evangelista Street have been closed since Saturday, September 10, 2010.

Said establishment was a constant irritation to neighbors who has to endure the suffering every time they extend their operation to the wee hours of the morning causing most of them to suffer sleepless nights and tired bodies.

It was reported also that there are some customers who were able to bring inside the establishment their personal guns, when this is supposed to be taken by security personnel of establishments for safekeeping.

It was also claimed that some gun owners under the influence of liquor were able to illegally discharged their guns to the detriment of other law abiding customers who are just there to enjoy the night with friends, but instead were abused by these mindless critters.

Who knows, maybe other customers are also into drugs, provided that they are paying customers, the owners don't just give a damn even if what they're doing are illegal or not. "It is their concern, not ours"

In the last petition by residents of the said Baranggay, Mr. Charles Chiong, whose hotel establishment, is directly beside the protested Karaoke and Grill bar, complained that hotel guest cannot sleep due to the noise emanating from the said bar. Residents are just hoping that this is not temporary, especially if politics would enter the picture, then goodbye again to the community's wish for an undisturb and unpolluted environment

In a related action, the local LGU approved an ordinance last November 2009, "Prohibiting Nuisance in the Municipality of Palompon, Providing Penalties For Violators Thereof, and for Other Purposes" - authored by Mun. Councilor GILBERT MANONGSONG. A similar decision of the Supreme Court en banc was noted by the undersigned which I quote:

"EN BANC
G.R. No. L-17760 October 31, 1962
RAMCAR, INC., Petitioner, vs. EUSEBIO S. MILLAR, ET AL., Respondents.

REYES, J.B.L., J.: chanrobles virtual law library
Petitioner Ramcar Inc., operates and maintains an auto repair and body building shop at No. 1241 (formerly No. 1377) General Luna Street, Ermita, Manila, while the seven private respondents reside near or around the shop. Respondents brought an action before the Court of First Instance of Manila to abate the said establishment as a nuisance. That Court, after trial, dismissed the complaint, and not satisfied with the decision, the plaintiffs (respondents now) appealed the case to the Court of Appeals. The appellate court reversed the trial court's decision and entered judgment against Ramcar, Inc. as follows:

WHEREFORE, the decision of the lower court is hereby reversed and another one rendered declaring that the operation and maintenance of the establishment of the defendant corporation at No. 1241 (formerly No. 1377) General Luna St., Ermita, Manila, is a public nuisance and violates the provisions of Zonification Ordinance No. 2830, as amended by Ordinance No. 2906, of the City of Manila; ordering the defendants-appellees to remove the said establishment and all buildings and structures built therein within 30 days from the finality of this judgment; and, condemning defendant-appellee Ramcar, Inc., to pay plaintiffs-appellants the sum of P10,000.00 as special damages and P2,000.00 as attorney's fees, without costs in this instance".

I hope that our local business establishment will try to follow the law to the fullest or else the full force of the law will follow them whatever they do and wherever they go.

It can be gleaned from the above, that though the law is late in coming, it will surely catch up with them, whether they like it or not. Surely "karma" is the fruit of whatever you planted. The concerns of the many should always prevail against the concern of the few.

When in Cebu City, please visit also gregmelep.com for your retirement and real estate needs.

Big cities toxic to raising kids

By DJ Yap
Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines—About 70 percent of the world’s population is expected to be living in cities by 2050. Some experts are concerned that as cities continue to grow and prosper, they become less and less habitable for families.

For some reason, people stop marrying and having children in places that are too urban, too congested or too expensive.

“There’s something really strange that’s going on right now,” said Joel Atkin, an internationally recognized expert on global economic, political and social trends.

“What’s happening to many cities is that they are no longer attractive to families,” he said at the closing plenary of the World Cities Summit held in Singapore last month. The summit was a meeting place for leaders to discuss the best ways and practices to make cities more livable.

Rich big cities like New York are witness to this phenomenon, and so have rich mid-sized cities like Singapore, Atkin said.

Metro Manila

Even Metro Manila, which has 11 million residents, does not seem to be an ideal place anymore for growing a family as it grapples with the same issues that beset many big, densely populated cities of the world: congestion, pollution, crime and poverty.

“Something in the way we’re building our cities and our society, but cities in particular, is making it toxic for the formation of families and raising children,” Atkin said.

“That’s why we have things called suburbs. That’s why people start off in Manhattan, get married and they move up to the Hudson Valley or they go to New Jersey, and they raise a family,” he said.

High cost, little space

Which is not to say most New Yorkers don’t want to stay in the city. “(But) they can’t afford to stay. They can’t have enough space to stay. And this seems to be the same thing that we’re hearing from people in Singapore—that they may stay but they never have children,” Atkin said.

The same could be said for Metro Manila. As people start to raise a family, they move to a neighboring province, like Rizal, Cavite, Laguna or Batangas where land is cheaper and the cost of living is much lower.

The question, then, is how do governments create dense urban spaces that can accommodate families? “(We have to know) how we can do that because what we’re building now is certainly not encouraging,” Atkin said.
This is probably the single biggest issue that cities must face down the road, in 10, 20 or 30 years “when our cities are overwhelmingly made up of people who are in their 60s, 70s and 80s,” he added.

Liu Thai Ker, chair of the Center for Liveable Cities Advisory Board and the master planner of Singapore, admitted that density was a big problem, especially for a city-state like Singapore, which has one of the thickest populations crammed into a tiny space.

Singapore has 5 million people and a land area of 702 square kilometers. (Metro Manila is about 636 sq m.)
But it is a problem that is not without a solution, he said.

Sociologists

Liu cited the experience of Singapore’s public housing sector, which had been planned with input from sociologists to determine what was best for the welfare of the families that would live there.
“When we started public housing, we had to plan ahead of people’s aspirations. Because in those days, all people wanted was a roof over their heads, nothing more. But we felt that that would be setting too low a standard, and it’s not good for the long term development of Singapore,” he said.

“We decided that we would not be building houses, we’re building communities. So that means we had to study what makes a community. What kind of territorial size should we devote for people to have a sense of belonging to this piece of land,” Liu said.

Singapore precinct

After a lot of surveys, it was determined that the smallest community unit was to be the precinct, which should be somewhere between three and five hectares, and the population should be around 700 to 1,000 families, he said.

The rationale was to make sure “you have enough variety of people there,” he said. In fact, Singapore’s public housing estate has a population that roughly approximates the national proportions of ethnicity, that is, the number of Chinese, Indians, Malays and other races in each building must correspond to the national average.
On top of that, each estate must only have one entry point. “Because these are urban people, they don’t really go out of their way to make friends with the neighbors, so what we tried to do was, in each precinct, we have only one entry point,” he said.

“So at least you can recognize their faces even if you don’t talk to them,” he added.
Liu said the sociologists also told him that people stop talking to each other with more than eight families in a block. So what they did was to put partitions in the corridor for every eight families.

“Six months later, I went to visit the families (in one block). I went to the first family, Chinese, all the other kids, Malay, Indian, followed into the living room. I went to another one. I went in—all other kids followed me. In fact, some of the neighbors followed me,” he said.

“My point is, even in sociology, there’s a possibility to look at a problem, analyze the problem, and find solutions, not just through design, (but) through a variety of means,” Liu said.
Intergenerational mixing

Atkin said another important feature that must not be absent in cities was intergenerational mixing.
“We must bring back multigenerational families, which have been the backbone of urban life from the very beginning. How can we get the older people and younger people together and have multigenerational neighbors?” he said.

Most cities want to build neighborhoods where everybody is 30 years old and stays out at 3 in the morning. “Then they’re gonna build senior housing so that all the old people are together,” he said.

“That, I think, is very socially destructive both for the old people and the young people,” Atkin said.
One good example of an intergenerational neighborhood is the community where his mother lives, he said.

“In this (New York) neighborhood, they did a very good job. They have the inner core, which is quite a few single people and elderly, and a lot of houses surrounded with families. You have, during the daytime, a lot of the elderly around, then at night, the kids are out. Then on weekends and Sundays, the families are out. So the same spaces are being used over and over again,” he said.

He recalled asking his mother, who was 87 years old, if she wanted to move to Florida with her sister and other people her age. His mother replied: “Oh, that’s for old people.”

Preschool, senior center

Citing another example, in Los Angeles, he said a preschool sits right next to a senior center. “That breaks down the sense of isolation (among the elderly). I think it’s unnatural for young people not to be with older people, and for older people to be deprived of young people,” he said.

But in the future, there may just be fewer and fewer young people in the most successful cities.

Stress, low fertility

Singapore has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, something Atkin finds ironic, considering government efforts to make sure it can provide for families.

Housing in the city-state is heavily subsidized. Education is practically free and health services are universally accessible.

“So I asked myself, why aren’t the citizens making children? Were people so stressed, so busy and so competitive? (These are) all the things that made Singapore a great city, and many other cities like New York or San Francisco, a great city. But now it is producing a very strange effect—people are not having children,” he said.

“At this agency I was at, they couldn’t even get Singaporeans to date,” he said, eliciting laughter from the audience.

Atkin’s observations did not sit well with his hosts. After all, the summit, in some ways, was intended to celebrate urban lifestyles as much as it was to find solutions to the ailments that cities faced.

Mah Bow Tan, then Singapore’s minister for national development, said Atkin’s points were too simplistic, and that there might well be other sociological explanations for Singapore’s low birthrate.

“In cities like Singapore, and in many cities in Asia, I think high-density living is a necessity. Suburbs are a luxury and we get to make the best of them,” he said.

“If you look at the case of Singapore and visit a public housing estate, each town has about 200,000 people. In the town, there are schools, places of worship, work, transportation, shops and sports. Name it, we have it,” he said.

“Within this community of 200,000, we start to build flats, apartments which are comfortable, which can house a family of four, five people, three bedrooms, dining hall, and so on. And in each block, there are common spaces. The ground floor is open. Children can play. Where you can hold a wedding. If there’s a demise in the family, you can have a funeral. Or you can hold a concert, or put a child care center, you can put an elderly care center as well,” Mah said.

It is quite possible, he insisted, “to have livable, sustainable cities which are high-rise and high-density.”

Melbourne

Melbourne Mayor Robert Doyle pointed out that something was being forgotten in the debate: “We begin with people, but we very quickly move to buildings and densities, and these sorts of things.”

“You know,” he said, “when we think about our cities, the question we have to ask ourselves is why would a family come into the center of our city other than to lose and enjoy themselves?”

He said it was the role of city leaders to “activate” their city and make it attractive for all kinds of people to come visit and, perhaps, even move there to raise a family.

Comedy festival

In Melbourne, he said they are trying to accomplish this through festivals. “Whether it’s a comedy festival, or the arts festival or music festival, we actually pay extra money so that they can put on family-friendly and alcohol-free activities, like in the evening at 10:30, 11, midnight, 12:30, 1 in the morning,” he said.

“We often think about the buildings. To me, the important part is the fine grain. The important part is what happens on our streets, what happens when the buildings kick the footpath or the sidewalk, as somebody would say, and the activity that we generate there. That’s what will bring the people in,” he said.

Century of culture

Doyle said this is the “century of culture.” “It is the century of people, and that’s what we should be serving. So what we try to do is make it very attractive for families to come in. And you can actually plan for this.”
In the mid-1990s, Melbourne had only 400 dwellings in the central business district. “And the city decided, ‘we want people in our city, we want families in our city.’”

But the property developers were reluctant. “They said, ‘No, no, you can’t sell apartments to families in the middle of the city,’” Doyle said.

Residential flats

So, he said, the city took a commercial building, converted it into residential flats, and sold them to show the developers that they could have a commercial residential proposition in the middle of the city.
“And I believe Melbourne today, from that 400 dwellings in the middle 1990s, we now have 17,000, and that’s in the CBD, right in the center of the city,” Doyle said.

“So my answer just keeps coming back to people,” he concluded. “Why would people want to come to the center of your city? It will be different for all of us. But if you get them in there, I’ll tell you what, ‘you get a more vibrant city.’”

WORLD'S MEGACITIES

MEGACITY POPULATION(in millions)

1 Tokyo 35.68
2 New York-Newark 19.04
3 Mexico City 19.02
4 Mumbai 18.98
5 São Paulo 18.84
6 Delhi 15.92
7 Shanghai 14.99
8 Kolkata 14.79
9 Dhaka 13.48
10 Buenos Aires 12.80
11 LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana 12.50
12 Karachi 12.13
13 Cairo 11.89
14 Rio de Janeiro 11.74
15 Osaka-Kobe 11.29
16 Beijing 11.11
17 Manila 11.10
18 Moscow 10.45
19 Istanbul 10.06

When in Cebu City, please visit also gregmelep.com for your retirement and real estate needs.

Source: UN-HABITAT 2008; Data from UN Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects 2007; LAWRENCE DE GUZMAN, INQUIRER RESEARCH

Guimaras tourist arrivals up 34%

By Nestor P. Burgos Jr.
Philippine Daily Inquirer

ILOILO CITY, Philippines - Guimaras Island ravage by a massive oil spill four years ago, has bounced back.

Tourist arrivals in Guimaras in 2009 was up by 34 percent or by more than 50,000 compared to 2008, according to data from the provincial tourism office.

Tourist arrivals last year leaped to 212,938 compared to 158,441 in 2008. This included 7,370 foreign tourists and 205,568 local guests.

The island's tourist arrivals reached only 156,423 in 2007 and 156,423 in 2006 after the oil spill struck. The number of tourists in 2009 was also higher than the pre-oil spill data of 204,312,500 arrivals recorded in 2005.
"We have mostly recovered and the big leap in tourist arrivals is very encouraging and welcome," Guimaras Gov. Felipe Nava told the Inquirer in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

The oil spill on August 11, 2006 was considered the country's worst marine disaster and was triggered after the MT Solar 1, chartered by Petron Corp., sank in stormy seas southeast of Guimaras and spilled more than 2.1 million liters of bunker fuel oil, which it was transporting from Bataan to Zamboanga.

Nava said the island's economy has returned almost to normal with affected fishermen going back to fishing.
The oil spill had contaminated at least 27 villages in the towns of Nueva Valencia, Sibunag, San Lorenzo, Jordan and Buenavista in Guimaras and in the towns of Sara, Concepcion and Oton in Iloilo. It also reached the coastal villages of Iloilo City.

At least 6,156 families or 30,531 persons, mostly fishermen, lost their livelihood.
The oil spill also devastated the island's rich marine resources affecting 239 kilometers of coastline, 15.8 square kilometers of coral reefs, 105 hectares of mangroves and 42 hectares of seaweeds damaged or destroyed.

Scientists have earlier warned that the environmental impact of the oil spill would linger longer than the economic impact.

Various results of scientific studies and researches released last year showed that the island's coastal environment has not completely recovered with marine plants and animals showing abnormalities that are mainly attributed to the contamination of the oil spill.

Nava said continued researches and studies were necessary to determine the extent and duration of the environmental impacts of the oil spill.

But a militant nationwide federation of fisherfolk organizations on Tuesday called on the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to compel oil firm Petron Corp. to pay P20 billion for victims of the oil spill.

The Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) urged Environment Secretary Ramon Paje to ensure that the oil firm would compensate the 133,000 victims for the damage caused by the environmental disaster.

Aside from the P 20-billion economic compensation package, the group is also urging the DENR to compel Petron to set aside another P 20-billion for the rehabilitation of Guimaras for ten years spread or P2 billion per year.
Pamalakaya national chair Fernando Hicap claimed that owners of the giant oil company have yet to fulfill their promise to fund the rehabilitation of the marine environment and the livelihood of over 100,000 people in Guimaras, Iloilo and neighboring areas.

"Until now, there is no justice to the victims of the Guimaras oil spill tragedy. The DENR has adopted a forgive and forget attitude with Petron at the expense of the environment and the coastal people of Guimaras and Panay islands. This is horrible," Hicap said in a statement.

The London-based International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund (IOPCF), an intergovernmental agency that indemnifies losses resulting from oil spills, had paid a total of P908,120,203 to 22,437 claimants as compensation for economic losses and refund for expenses in the clean-up and preventive measures in relation to the oil spill. But the IOPCF had rejected around 133,000 other claims after it questioned the validity of the claims.

Philippine coastal marine habitats at risk: A case study of Guimaras Island