By GIL M. ABARICO
DAVAO CITY —The rampant violation of rules on basic environmental safety and the unabated influx of small-time miners and their families to the new "gold-rush "site at Mt. De Oro in Maco municipality, Compostela Valley (ComVal) has triggered the immediate closure of the increasingly congested area.
This was learned from Secretary Elisea G. Gozun of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) who was here to see to it that her closure order is strictly enforced and its enforcement closely monitored by a multi-agency implementing body led by the DENR regional office here, particularly its Bureau of Mines and Geo-Sciences (BMG).
The PNP task force has set up checkpoints at entry points leading to the "gold rush" site.
Secretary Gozun told this correspondent that before handing down the closure order, DENR personnel in the area had confiscated several chainsaws used by small mining groups to illegally cut down trees for use as timber support in the tunnels they have dug in Mt. De Oro.
What further irked the DENR chief was a field report that they were compelled to release and return the confiscated chainsaws when they were allegedly threatened with bodily harm by armed groups claiming to own the treecutting instruments they used to denude the entire "gold rush" site.
At the same time, Gozun was alarmed by reports that the small mining community at Mt. de Oro had swelled from mere hundreds at the start of the gold rush to more than l2,000 — with tunnels dug already numbering about 40 — just before she ordered the closure and the sealing of the entry points to prevent any disaster—natural or man-made.
"The health and sanitation conditions in the mining area were reaching disastrous proportions, she declared," thus prompting DENR to act swiftly.
"We had to do something drastic and immediate to prevent any disaster just waiting to happen," she added.
