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By Ira Karen Apanay, Reporter
LAGUNA Lake Development Authority
(LLDA) General Manager Edgardo Manda on Wednesday said political
pressures hamper the demolition of illegal fish pens and fish cages
in Laguna Bay.
“We get tremendous political
pressure, local politicians telling me to go slow with the
demolition for their constituents,” Manda said.
Manda also belied Environment and
Natural Resources Secretary Lito Atienza’s claim that the local
government units within the Laguna Bay support the demolition of the
illegal fish pens.
He said that it is easy to say
that the local government units (LGUs) support the demolition but
the reality is that these politicians keep asking him to slow down
with the demolition because they are protecting their constituents.
Manda said actual inventory of
fish pens and fish cages (legal and illegal) in the Bay have reached
20,000 hectares.
He said the surface of the lake
is 90,000 hectares and under the fishery zoning and management plan
(ZOMAP), which the LLDA developed for Laguna Lake in 1983, there are
only 10,000 hectares allocated for the fish pen belt; and 5,000 for
the fish cage belt.
The ZOMAP was designed to
rationalize the management and regulate the use of the lake’s
fishery resources, and to resolve equity problems among large-scale
fish pen operators and small-scale fishermen dependent on water
reach.
Manda said that the LLDA will
continue to demolish again on July 31 and August 1 and will start to
demolish illegal fish pens within the navigational lanes.
Navigational lanes and barangay
access lanes were also identified to facilitate the movement of
people, goods and services within the lake.
He further said that the agency
spends at least P30,000 per day for demolition and that President
Gloria Arroyo gave the LLDA an initial funding of P3 million.
However, Manda said the LLDA needs P50 million to finish the
demolition.
Manda vows to demolish at least
half of the illegal fish pens by the end of the year. “If I
can’t do this by end of the year, I have to resign,” he added.
He explained that small fish pens
in the bay range from size of 200 to 500 square meters while the big
fish pens are about 50 hectares each. The agency must demolish
almost 10,000 hectares of illegal fish pens in the area.
Laguna Lake is the largest lake
in the Philippines and the second largest inland freshwater lake in
Southeast Asia after Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. It is the most
vital inland water body in the country and used to be regarded as
among the world’s living lakes.
If no appropriate and immediate
mitigation and rescue will be implemented, government officials and
environmentalists have predicted that Laguna Lake will be
biologically dead in five years.
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