Permit Issued to Ship Cebu Rocks for Manila Bay Rehabilitation – MGB in Central Visayas

CEBU CITY, Cebu, Philippines – The Visayas headquarters of the Office of Mines and Geosciences (MGB-) said on Saturday that it had issued a permit to transport dolomite from Cebu province for the Manila Bay rehabilitation project, in response to questions posed by local officials. who said they were left in the dark about the extraction and shipping of the rocks.

In a statement, MGB 7 director Loreto Alburo said his office issued a mineral transportation permit on August 26 to deliver at least 3,500 wet metric tons of dolomite rocks from the city of Alcoy in southern Cebu. to the Manila Integrated Cargo Terminal in Manila.

“This shipment of dolomite is the reported ‘white sand’ that had been spread along the shores of Manila Bay to enhance the aesthetic beauty of the bay,” said Alburo.

Dolomite Mining Corp. (DMC) mined the dolomite at Barangay Pugalo in Alcoy, it added.

“The raw dolomite mined by DMC was turned over to its sole buyer, the Philippine Mining Service Corp. (PMSC) for processing into various desired sizes and marketable products,” the regional office said.

The PMSC-Alcoy Plant has an existing mineral processing permit from the MGB and is currently in its second five-year period that will expire in 2023.

MGB 7 said that dolomite products in Alcoy are regularly traded to various buyers here and abroad, such as Taiwan and Japan. Locally, Cebu Dolomites are shipped to Misamis Oriental, Pasig City, Davao City, Manila, and other cities in Cebu.

“The dolomite materials from Cebu have been mined, produced and shipped to various buyers following the proper laws and regulatory procedures,” said Alburo.

Mineable deposits

The MGB 7 statement sought to address some of the questions that remained unanswered for two days after an official from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) announced that a section of Manila Bay would be covered with “white sand.” as part of your rehabilitation.

The Undersecretary for the Environment, Benny Antiporda, later clarified that the sand was actually pulverized dolomite from Cebu.

The Cebu Provincial Board questioned on Friday how the dolomite was transported out of the province without the knowledge of the local government.

Alburo said that Cebu was one of the few provinces in the country that has economically exploitable dolomite deposits. The main deposits are between the towns of Alcoy and Dalaguete, he said.

Too expensive?

The towns of Alcoy, Dalaguete, Oslob and Boljoon are known for their white sand beaches.

Alcoy, about 90 kilometers south of Cebu City, is a fifth-class municipality with an annual income of at least P25 million.

Also on Saturday, a nongovernmental organization that monitors public infrastructure projects said the Manila Bay “beach nutrition” project could be overpriced by as much as 55 percent.

Terry Ridon, coordinator of Infrawatch PH, said that the approved budget for the Manila Bay Rehabilitation Program was P397,897 million.

Infrawatch PH, on its Facebook page, said the exact figure was P397,897,376.62, citing the Supplemental Bulletin No. 1 of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) as a source.

Antiporda previously said that the project cost P349 million, but later issued a correction and placed the cost at P389 million.

“For this project,” Ridon said, “most of the work is earthworks, particularly backfills. There are no other important works for this project except the earthworks ”.

Citing DPWH’s own fill cost estimate, he said that the typical unit cost of backfill work is “about P442.89 per cubic meter”, which he rounded to P500 per cubic meter “for simplicity.”

As “[t]The project requires a total of 164,700 cubic meters of sand ”, said Ridon, that total multiplied by P500 equals the cost of P82,350,000”.

Estimated price

Then he calculated the price of dolomite at P600 per cubic meter. “Using the 2017 Office of Mines and Geosciences price of dolomite at P600 per cubic meter, the total price of 164,700 units of dolomite is P98,820,000,” he added.

“Adding the cost of the fill work and the dolomite units brings a total baseline project cost of P181,170,000, Ridon said. In addition, he pointed out, subtracting that total “from the approved budget, we obtain P216,727,376.62… [or] a gross margin of 54.47 percent. “

Ridon said that the “DPWH [only] allows a profit margin of only 8 percent of a project’s estimated direct costs. “

“Unless fully disclosed and clarified by DENR, the estimated performance of the Manila Bay white sand project could reach a staggering 55 percent of its approved budget,” he said.

There is no plan to stop

In an interview with Inquirer, Antiporda reiterated Saturday that his department had no plans to stop the project despite mounting criticism from netizens and environmentalists.

He said that DENR and DPWH had placed “interventions” to keep the transported sand in place. “Many have said that it will disappear and we cannot change the forces of nature. Of course, there is a possibility that some [of the sand] it will disappear, but we have done engineering interventions for the project. We have put geotubes ”, said Antiporda.

Geotubes, or geotextile tubes, are specially made large cloth bags that help prevent erosion, according to Geofabrics, a company that produces these materials. In addition to helping prevent coastal erosion, they are also used for land reclamation, island building, wetland creation, and other similar constructions.

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