US firm: Residents can return to West Tower by Q3 of 2011

CH2M Hill Inc., the U.S.-based environmental remediation company contracted by First Philippine Industrial Corp. (FPIC), on Tuesday said that the residents of the West Tower Condominium in Makati City may be able to return to their residences by the third quarter of 2011. "The time is to try to get them back in by third quarter this year so that we can pull the plume away from the wall, then they can go inside," CH2M regional environmental manager Anthony Cole said during Tuesday's Senate hearing. In oil industry parlance, a “plume" is a body of oil that is on or under the surface of water or is spreading on or into the ground. Cole said that it will take them six to eight weeks to complete the cleanup of West Tower alone from the time when they complete the construction of the remediation system in May. He noted, however, that removing oil remnants from the soil and water in the area of barangay Bangkal around West Tower will take yet a longer time to finish—from three to five years—because of the huge amounts of oil spillage that seeped into the ground. "We want to remove the petroleum products away from West Tower first. That will take a little bit of time, [but in] three to five years... we can stop and everybody's comfortable and safe," he said. Cole said that as of December 2, 2010, they had already installed 26 monitoring wells as part of the remediation strategy for the Bangkal oil leak cleanup. He said that soil and water samples obtained from the monitoring wells are sent to a laboratory in Malaysia for analysis, which will determine the extent of the "plume" or the area affected by the leak in Makati. CH2M Hill is currently considering the following methods of separating the oil from the water collected at West Tower: air sparge (injecting air into groundwater), soil vapor extraction, or pump, among others. UP expert: Not 3 to 5, but 8 years But Carlos Arcilla, director of the University of the Philippines National Institute of Geological Sciences (UP NIGS), disputed the claim of Cole that they will be able to complete the cleanup in three to five years. "[It will take] eight years at the current pace they are doing... it’s not fast enough," Arcilla told reporters in an interview after the hearing. He likewise explained that the FPIC has yet to divulge its target on how much oil must be retrieved in a specified amount of time. "They did not give any figures," he said. Arcilla said that around 1.8 million liters of oil was spilled in the area around Bangkal. Cole said that they have recovered only 61,723 liters of oil as of January 22, 2011. "Mahirap yun... naghalo pa sa tubig, sabihin nang times five yun," he said. (Cleaning that up will be difficult. And since some of it has mixed with water, it will take five times longer to finish.) But FPIC officer-in-charge Anthony Mabasa backed Cole, saying their target is that by the third quarter of 2011, oil products must no longer be able to enter West Tower anymore even while they continue with the remediation. "That's our target [because] remediation will take from three to five years," he said. Conflicting statements Senate environment committee chairman Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri said he recognizes how "conflicting" the statements of the resource persons were during the hearing. Zubiri likewise expressed doubts whether the West Tower residents will be able to go back to their homes within the year or even the next. "Ang kawawa dito ay ang mga residents ng West Tower and I hope maayos na ng FPIC ang problema," he said in a separate interview. (The West Tower residents are the ones suffering and I hope the FPIC will fix the problem.) The senator emphasized, however, that the pipeline leak must not happen in other parts of the country, especially in areas which cannot afford a cleanup operation like the one being conducted by the government of Makati City. Zubiri said that his committee will no longer conduct another hearing on the issue and that they will prepare a committee report once Shell gives its oil delivery report. Mabasa, for his part, said that Tuesday's Senate hearing was a "session of allegations and opinions." "Perhaps there's a better time to discuss objectively what the technical issues are," he said. FPIC pipeline The FPIC pipeline transports 60 percent of Metro Manila’s crude and refined petroleum needs from refineries in Batangas. Among the oil companies that use it to transport oil products are Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron Corp.’s Caltex unit. Earlier, the West Tower residents filed a petition for writ of kalikasan (nature) before the Supreme Court against 45 officials of the FPIC, asking for the permanent shutdown and replacement of the damaged pipeline. The FPIC later on issued an apology to all those who were affected by the oil leak.—JV, GMANews.TV