By Leonardo V. Micua
DAGUPAN CITY, (PNA) — Many of the fish cages in Sual, Pangasinan will be retained but will be moved some 200 meters away from the 1,200 megawatt Coal-fired Power Plant to minimize threat to the latter and require their owners to follow the requirements.
This was the recommendation of an inter-agency committee formed by Gov. Amado Espino Jr. at a close door meeting Friday with Sual Mayor Roberto Arcinue and Ruben Licerio, manager of the Sual Coal-fired Power Plant operated by the company Team Energy.
In that meeting presided over by Pangasinan Provincial Administrator Rafael Baraan, it was decided that not all of the 778 fish cages in Sual’s Cabalitian Bay will be retained. Only those that have Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) and permits issued by the municipal government of Sual will be allowed to operate.
Environmental Management Bureau regional rirector Joel Salvador said his office issued sometime in July last year ECC for a 10-hectare area of Cabalitian Bay earlier designated as mariculture area that can accommodate only 50 fish cages.
He said this means that all the other fish cages located outside the mariculture zone numbering 728 have no ECCs and therefore operating illegally and would be subject of cease and desist order (CDO). In addition to this, their owners could be slapped with administrative fine of P50,000 per structure they owned.
Mayor Arcinue said he will ask the fish cage owners to secure their respective ECÇs from EMB in order to legalize their operations while admitting himself that some fish cages have no municipal permits and have to be stopped.
Arcinue considers the recommendation of the committee to let the fishcages move a safe distance away from the power plant a happy compromise.
The fish cages in Sual are producing 30 metric tons of milkfish daily which it supplies to Metro Manila and other parts of Pangasinan and would be a big loss to the nation if they are done away with.
Power plant manager Licerio clarified that they are not seeking the demolition or dismantling of the fish cages but only the towing of these to a safe location from the power plant, citing instances when some milkfish that escaped from the cages only 50 meters away found their way to the facility’s cooling system.