China reclamation using PH soil–gov
OLONGAPO CITY—China has been expanding its reclamation projects in the West Philippine Sea, using massive boulders and soil extracted from Zambales province by local mining companies, Gov. Amor Deloso said on Tuesday.
Citing information from local officials and residents, Deloso said China has been building military structures and an airport on 3,500 hectares of reclaimed area near the disputed Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal.
He said 450 trucks “worked day and night, shipping soil from three mountains in Sta. Cruz town” that were leveled by mining companies extracting nickel ore there.
“The shipment of soil to China’s reclamation projects near the shoal went unnoticed because residents thought it was being taken to (mainland) China,” Deloso told the INQUIRER by telephone.
He said he had informed the Department of Environment and Natural Resources about the reports for validation by the department.
When Deloso assumed office on June 30, he issued Executive Order No. 1 which suspended all mining activities in Zambales.
Anomaly
During the interview, Deloso said he observed an anomaly in the manner that soil was being extracted and shipped out of the country.
“How come the ships that supposedly carried soil to China had been returning to our port areas so quickly? Certainly, those ships didn’t bring the soil to mainland China,” he said.
Aside from soil, Deloso said boulders from the towns of Botolan and Masinloc, both in Zambales, served as bedrock for China’s reclamation activities.
“When China completed the bedrock sometime ago, they had to dump thick deposits of earth on it. The soil coming from Sta. Cruz town is ideal for their reclamation activities because it is clay,” Deloso said.
In July last year, an interlinked system of buoys and metal pipes measuring 1 kilometer was found in Zambales’ waters.
An expert in the manufacture of industrial rubber and fiberglass pipes said the device is a “dredge floater assembly” composed of suction and discharge components.
“I believe these objects were used in reclamation activities [in the West Philippine Sea],” Erwin de la Torre said in an earlier interview.
Dredging tools
De la Torre, a former executive of a company that manufactures equipment similar to those found in Zambales, said the device is usually attached to a dredging machine while the machine sucks up sand from the sea bottom.
Fishermen first saw the objects some 5.5 kilometers ( 3 nautical miles) from the shoreline of Cabangan town in Zambales.
They said they believed the objects could have been washed away from Panatag Shoal since they saw similar objects near that area.
The shoal, also called Bajo de Masinloc, is among the disputed territories in the West Philippine Sea. It is 230 km (124 nautical miles) west of Zambales.
Filipino fishermen reported encountering harassment from Chinese patrols when they go out to fish in Panatag. The harassment did not stop even after the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in favor of the Philippines in its dispute with China over the West Philippine Sea.