Vol. XXII, No. 83 [ BusinessWorld Online ]
Wednesday, November 19, 2008 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES
ORMOC, LEYTE — The Leyte Industrial Development Estate (LIDE) is heeding pressures from the Ormoc city government for it to secure an environmental permit to operate.
Amos Calda, water system operation department manager of LIDE, said they will also apply for business permits to continue operating their well fields and pumping stations. The LIDE Management Corp. has also drawn up a monitoring plan and deep well management program to prevent adverse impact on groundwater resources.
This, even as the LIDE management had cited Letter of Instruction 962, signed by the late president Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1979, as exempting the ecozone’s locators from this requirement, and allowing diversion from any public water source to the 425-hectare industrial estate, free from all fees.
LIDE hosts facilities of the Philippine Associated Smelting & Refining Corp. and the Philippine Phosphate Fertilizer Corp. in the coastal town of Isabel in Leyte.
LIDE gets its water supply from Ormoc City, which sits on a 110-square-kilometer water recharge zone.
Ed Mangaoang, director of the Visayas State University’s Institute of Environmental Governance and consultant to LIDE management, said the industrial estate’s current water consumption has been reduced to 17,000 cubic meters of water a day, due to a recycling facility, from as much as 22,000 cu.m. previously. This, compared to the 42,000 cu.m. demand projected by the Local Water Utilities Administration in a 1984 study,leaving 80,000 cu.m. for other users in Ormoc. — Gerardo C. Reyes, Jr.
