How did a Power Plant end up in a PROTECTED AREA?

At Mondays meeting between PR Energy representatives and Subic Freeport locators, representatives repeatedly stated that Redondo Penninsula was zoned industrial by SBMA, but when did that happen?

In 2000 SBMA created a master plan for Subic Bay which focused activities in the Freeport of Tourism and Light industry. The Redondo Penninsula was declared as a protected buffer zone to protect the asset of the environment so Subic Bay could flourish as a tourism destination. Many Subic Bay locators including Ocean Adventure declared that this was the basis for them investing in Subic Bay.

The management team assigned to manage the "protected" area was also the SBMA board of directors. A huge conflict of interest one might say.

In 2010, when Aboitiz was pushing to build a power plant inside SBMA territory, as according to Aboitiz Chairman ECC certificates are easier to get from Freeport Zones than from LGU's the SBMA board amazingly decided to "rezone" a protected area to "Heavy Industrial" just to accommodate the Power Plant project which is now under the Meralco lead RP Energy consortium.

But what happened to the sworn duties of the SBMA board to act as the Protected Area Management Committee? did the shining dollars distract them from their duty to manage the protected area?

More importantly did the SBMA board sit as the Protected Area Management Committee and consider the best interests of redondo peninsula and Subic Bay before filling a resolution for it to no longer be a protected area? According to SBMA representatives there is no record of this.

How can the same team set up to mange a protected area decide to make it a heavy industrial area without due process?

When this questions was asked to RP Energy officials at Monday meetings there response was shocking!

They said "We can not continue this discussion without legal advice!"

SBMA has now a new board and feedback from all quarters is that this is one of the best board of directors we could have hoped for, so we hope that the current board of directors will put on their Protect Area Management Committee hats and ask how the previous board could have rezoned the very land they were entrusted to protect, especially without the consent of investors that had come in to the area on the basis of the protected area.
We understand that the current board has a lot of things to clean up but this issue needs their attention.