BACOLOD City – Mayor Renato Gustilo of San Carlos City, Negros Occidental rejected the request of San Carlos Bioenergy Incorporated (SCBI) to resume operations.
The company’s bio-ethanol plant was shuttered due to alleged environmental violations.
According to Gustilo, he will not allow SCBI to reoperate until they drain their ponds of spent wash.
The mayor recently inspected the plant’s wastewater storage. There, he saw SCBI’s holding ponds full of liquid waste spilling in some coastal areas in the city.
Engr. Arthur Batomalaque, senior environment management specialist of the City Environment Management Office, said the bioethanol plant has a 16-hectare pond that holds its 700 to 1,000 cubic meter of daily effluents.
Gustilo also met with representatives from SCBI yesterday to discuss the issue.
The SCBI started operation in 2008. It’s the first regenerative combined cycle power plant in Asia using sugar cane that produces 42 million liters of bioethanol per annum and 8 megawatts of electricity from sugar cane.
Gustilo blamed the plant’s industrial discharges for the discoloration of water in the coastal area of Sitio Maloloy-on, Barangay Punao.
Gustilo also cited as evidence the footages and reports from the City Planning and Development Coordinator’s Office, Bantay Katunggan of the Coastal Resource Management of the City Environment Management Office (CRM-CEMO), Eco-Zone Multi-Partite Monitoring Team (MMT), and City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office.
While SCBI rolled out mitigating measures, Gustilo lamented such initiatives were “not enough to cushion the negative impact” of the water pollution on residents.
“The SCBI should settle as soon as possible the recurring issues or the city government would recommend to the Environmental Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (EMB-DENR) the issuance of a cease-and-desist order,” the mayor stressed./PN
