"If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it."
Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States 1963-1969
I was having an email discussion with my sisters (Eva and Ems included) about putting a link on this blog site to Wikimapia ( a Google Earth type of satellite map but with a data layer to enable users to label place names and other functionality). We decided against doing that but while playing around Google Earth I scanned towards Labayug to see if I can locate the infamous Northern Cement Factory. I did and here is a photo of it.
That's an entire mountain destroyed to make cement! Thousands of trees were killed, the animals that lived on those trees gone, and the life-giving oxygen produced by those trees extinguished. I can't even imagine the amount of pollution that drains into the river when the rains arrive, not to mention the mudslides that destroy the lowlying farm lands below it.
When I was in Sagunto I actually heard someone say that "yes, what NCC did to Labayug is ugly, but hey, they have paved roads". Huh? The town traded a beautiful mountain for paved roads? Well, duh! Of course, NCC had to pave the road so the huge cement loaders and other high polluting trucks can rumble past the town spewing the stinky diesel fumes; so it can go up and down the mountain to finish destroying what mother nature took millions of years to make!
I hear that there are rumors about NCC's plan of expanding its monstrous operation into our beautiful barangay?! Let me ask my fellow Saguntonians this question, What would you (as an individual and as a barangay) do if you thought this expansion is coming to your door step? Would your response be the usual "bahala na" or "nasa dios" reaction, or would it compel you to organize, educate, network and fight the monstrosity? Do YOU want what happened in Labayug to happen in Sagunto? Please leave a comment, I'm a curious ignoramus.
:-)
~Babot
