Irreversible: Incompetent Government Seeks Help for Oil Spill

National Disaster: Guimaras Oil Spill

Last August 11, an oil-tanker, M/T Solar I, carrying 2M litres of tanker fuel, sank at the Guimaras Strait located off the coast of Guimaras and Negros Occidental. 200,000 litres of oil were spilled.

The oil spill has now contaminated 239 kilometers of coastline and mangroves, affected 16 coastal barangays and displaced 2,000 fisherfolk. The 1,100-hectare Taclong National Marine Reserve was also heavily damaged.

The cleanup has been estimated to take 3 years.

What the national Philippine government has done so far is to probe into the cause of the spill to determine who will be liable for damages. Pres. GMA has created a Special Board of Marine Inquiry, spending tax money in the purpose. It must be noted that the owner of the oil is Petron, a 40% Phil. government-owned corporation.

An aerial photo shows a Philippine Coast Guard ship spraying dispersant to clean up the oil spill northeast of Guimaras island, central Philippines, August 18, 2006. Disaster workers and residents in Guimaras are attempting to contain last week's oil slick from a sunken tanker due to its impact on fish, plants, people and tourism in the area. Picture taken August 18, 2006. REUTERS/Leo Solinap (PHILIPPINES)

The effects are estimated to last for at least 2 generations.

Although some organisms may be seriously injured or killed very soon after contact with the oil in a spill, other effects are more subtle and often longer lasting. For example, freshwater organisms are at risk of being smothered by oil that is carried by the current, or of being slowly poisoned by long-term exposure to oil trapped in shallow water or stream beds.

Watch out for the weather, whatever you're eating in the next two generations, the displacement of many fisherfolk, and economic setbacks.

I heard they're shaving off the heads of convicts so that they could use the hair as a boom to absorb the sludge. Why not require all the salons to do that? Nobody's got much functional use for hair anyway.

Please Help the Philippines.

Below: Local residents, use rags and water to clean off some of the spilled oil that has collected at the rocks on the breakwater in Nueva Valencia town in Guimaras island after a tanker contracted by Petron, the Solar I, sank in rough seas on August 11 while carrying 500,000 gallons of oil. Coast guard officials struggling to contain a dangerous oil spill in the Philippines expressed frustration that a sunken tanker described by environmentalists as a "ticking time bomb" had yet to be raised.(AFP/Joel Nito)