Subic Bay - soon to be DEAD BAY?

We read with interest the letter of response written by SBMA Chairman Bobby Garcia to Alex Hermoso regarding the RP Energy funded Coal Fired Power Plant planned for Redondo peninsula.

If you haven't yet read it CLICK HERE to view it.

In his letter Chairman Garcia says:

“...Rest assured, the SBMA is very much aware of the opposition mounted by the various stakeholders to the project. In response, the SBMA, in cooperation with the key entities behind the project, have been exerting efforts to include additional measures for efficiency, safety and environmental soundness of the project to better achieve its purposes as an environment friendly power generation project..."

We must commend the efforts Chairman Garcia and the new SBMA board in tackling some of the tough issues they have inherited, but this task seems to be made much more difficult because of the misinformation and propaganda being fed to them by RP Energy.


On September 9 RP Energy gave the SBMA board their "dog and pony" show, presenting how little effect the power plant would have by focusing on air emissions. According to observers there were a few questions from the SBMA board and RP Energy breezed through its show, with a lack of experts present there was not much of a challenge.

This was not the case on September 12 when RP Energy attempted the same "show" on Freeport locators.

Although RP Energy wanted to focus on air emissions, locators, especially those from the tourism sector were more interested to discuss the visual impact and damage below the water line.

RP Energy admitted to locators that they did not have answers to these concerns, that in fact the major concerns of the tourism sector were very real and largely being ignored by all concerned.

RP Energy claims that the effect on the water is minimal because the water around the power-plant will only be 3 degrees hotter than the rest of the bay and showed models of the heat drift only at neutral tide. This is however not the main damage that the power-plant does to the water of the bay.

As pointed out my a marine biologist from one Subic Bay Locator, the water sucked into the powerplant contains plankton, microorganisms and miniature marine life that is essential to the ecosystem of the bay. While RP Energy claims fishing will not be effected in the bay as fish will not get sucked into the water intakes this is a complete perversion of the facts.

Without plankton and the micro marine eco system the water is DEAD, the fish will certainly go away to find new feeding grounds, the corals and sponges will starve and the fish infested wreaks that thousands of divers come to see in Subic Bay will lay deserted.

The water that is sucked in at thousands of gallons per hour to the power-plant is heated to extreme temperatures while cooling the 800 degree plant before being dumped back into the bay, heating the bay water to high temperature destroys everything within the water, it breaks the eco system. When the water comes out of the power-station it is similar to distilled water, it has been divested of all minerals and living things.

Having a power-station at the mouth of Subic Bay is like flushing Subic Bay with Distilled water, as the incoming tide comes in, dead water from the power-plant is circulated into the bay, breaking the ecosystem. At the September 12 meeting representatives of RP Energy admitted that this is the case and that there "is nothing they can do about it", killing the marine life was essential to generating power.

While pumping hundreds of thousands of liters of dead water into the ocean is one thing, pumping it into the mouth of the most famous "protected" bays in Asia that is heralded as a tourism destination is repugnant.

Representatives of the Tourism sector begged RP Energy that if they must build a power-plant to not build it facing into a bay, not discharge into our inland waterway, to move it outside of the bay,  but representatives of RP Energy declared that the site is not perfect and does have some serious downsides but they insisted the location was chosen for them by SBMA, it is not their choice of site.

While RP Energy keeps saying "there is nothing we can do about it", maybe there is something that Chairman Garcia and the SBMA board can do about it, THEY CAN SAVE OUR BAY!

Chairman Garcia, respectfully, there is simply no way this can be an "environmentally sound project", the belief that it can be expressed in your letter indicates the project has been pushed through without the SBMA board being given all the information that it should have been, you have taken steps that we all applaud to ensure this doesn't happen again, but the construction on the current site should not be allowed to proceed. If it is beyond your power to stop the construction of the power-plant altogether then please please please MOVE IT AWAY FROM THE BAY WATERS!