Republic of the Philippines
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Quezon City, Metro Manila

SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
Third Regular Session

HOUSE BILL NO. Cy

INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVES
ARIEL B. CASILAO

CARLOS ISAGANI T. ZARATE, EMMI A. DE JESUS, ANTONIO L. TINIO,

ARLENE D. BROSAS, FRANCE L. CASTRO AND SARAH JANE I. ELAGO

EXPLANATORY NOTE

The Manila Bay is a heritage asset for the Filipino people. It has contributed to the
historical, political, economic and cultural development of the country; thus, it
deserves the utmost mutual appreciation of the people as a whole. From how
civilization in pre-Spanish Manila flourished, through the Spanish invasion and
resistance of early Filipinos, the thriving of the city as trade capital, the mock
“Battle of Manila Bay,” the construction of the Cavite Boulevard under the American
colonial period, the Japanese occupation, to the post-war and recent period, Manila
Bay has been a fabric of society on an individual and broader scales. Aside from
giving the Filipino people one of the most beautiful sunsets of the world, it also
offers a natural ecosystem that is safe haven to biodiversity even as it sustains
whole communities of fisherfolk and working people who subsisted on the bay’s rich
resources.

If anyone had rights over the Manila Bay, it is the Filipino people, and if it is to
serve any purpose, it should be for the benefit of the general population, and not an
elite few.

In September 2002, the people demanded for the preservation and protection of
Manila Bay at a local court in Cavite against the government agencies. It was
elevated in September 2005 to the Court of Appeals which issued an affirmative
decision. Then in September 2008, the Supreme Court, conclusively decided that
the government should clean-up, rehabilitate and preserve Manila Bay, and restore
and maintain its waters to make them fit for swimming, skin-diving, and other
forms of contact recreation.

Aside from the legal path that the people had taken, various groups, especially the
fisherfolk organization Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas.
or Pamalakaya - Pilipinas, have been demanding the preservation of Manila Bay
through legal and democratic actions and protests, opposing reclamation projects
such as the expansion of the Manila Bay Freeport Zone, including the Central
Business Park which is home to the SM Central Business Park and SM Mall of Asia.
In 2004, the group opposed the construction of the Navotas dumpsite, which is


actually a reclaimed fishpond, located exactly in the bay, citing that it would
potentially pollute Manila Bay.

Past administrations attempted to carry out the Supreme Court decision, but their
actions were limited to bay clean-ups. The government has also attempted to
undermine the Supreme Court decision by considering the worst form of destroying
Manila Bay, reclamation.

‘The government, by not declaring Manila Bay as “reclamation-free,” is essentially
undermining the 2008 Supreme Court decision. That decision bears the most basic
idea that the people, who appealed to the high court to command the executive
branch to clean up Manila Bay, is aspiring for it to be swimmable and fit for other
forms of recreation. With reclamation projects, which are subsequently managed by
big businesses in the private sector, the people would be deprived of their supreme
right to Manila Bay, that is public access.

This bill advances the nobility of the Supreme Court decision to rehabilitate Manila
Bay, which is to restore it to its previous glory, and to endow it, like the heritage
that it is, to the people. This is the main essence of the subject matter that is
hounding us at present.

Under the present administration, the issue of Manila Bay Rehabilitation has
polarized society. On one side is the executive branch, with all its machineries and
resources, which is using rehabilitation as a vehicle for reclamation. On the other is
the united people demanding for a genuine rehabilitation of Manila Bay and its
preservation by banning reclamation. The government is trying to sow confusion
among the people. It acts all noble by drumming up the recent clean-up drives,
with the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Department of
Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) assuring disapproval of any
reclamation while the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) has pending
reclamation projects to consider and the Office of the President basically
announcing its authorization.

The government has also identified the poor sectors as casualties of the
rehabilitation, part of its social costs. It is sweepingly judging them as culprits to
polluting Manila Bay and, worse, intends to displace them from their sources of
subsistence and livelihood and relocate them to areas of uncertainty, separating
them apart from the “people” who should enjoy and benefit from what the bay has
to offer. Such will be the fate of more than a hundred poor families in Cavite City,
dwelling on the site of the proposed international airport at Sangley Point. Their
only sin is for being too poor to install their own septic tank, while commercial
establishments in Manila are given fair warnings or grace period, though polluting
the bay for many years. The Sangley Point international airport project and the
LGU-endorsed 320-hectare Bacoor Reclamation and Development project could
displace 26,000 poor families from Cavite City, Bacoor City, Noveleta, Kawit and
Rosario of the said province. In the name of “rehabilitation,” the government is
aiming to displace more than 260,000 poor families, on which the bulk 160,000
families will come from coastal communities of Cavite province. Thus, the social
cost includes the dislocation of 1 to 1.5 million Filipinos.


“Development” along Manila Bay, in actual fact, wiped out the mangrove ecosystem,
from as broad as 54,000 hectares at the turn of the 20th century, to a measly 794
hectares in 1995. The 4,600-hectare wetlands, coral reefs and seagrass beds are
obviously threatened. Not by the communities who rely on them for subsistence,
but by reclamation projects that see no profits from them. The Commercial
Business District of the Bay City alone, or the reclaimed area of Okada Manila in
Parafiaque City to the SM Esplanade Seaside Terminal in Pasay City, has destroyed
almost 4 kilometer of the bay’s natural ecosystem.

Without the categorical admission of prohibiting reclamation in Manila Bay, the
outrageous is in front of us. From the near 8-kilometer coastline from Okada
Manila in Parafaque City to the Manila Ocean Park, the people could only “swim”
as per mentioned on the Supreme Court decision, on a bantam 1.3-kilometer bay
area in Malate, Manila, from the Manila Yacht club to near the United States
Embassy compound. It is as clear as the blue sky of Manila Bay’s horizon that
reclamation has deprived the people of public access. Without public access, the
Supreme Court decision falls pointless.

May this bill act as the collective and decisive will of the Filipino people to refute
any stratagem of any party, that worships profit at the cost of undermining the
people’s aspiration for a sincerely-rehabilitated, restored and preserved Manila Bay.
The approval of this bill is deemed critical and urgently sought.

sls

ANAKPAWIS Party-list

REP) . ZARATE, REP. EMMI A. DE JESUS

BAYAN MUNA Pérty-list GABRIELA Women’s Party
)NIO L. TINIO ROSAS

‘Teachers Party-list 's Party

REP. FRANCE L. CASTRO
ACT Teachers Party-list

I. ELAGO
Party-list



Republic of the Philippines
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Quezon City, Metro Manila

SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
Third Regular Session

9067

HOUSE BILL NO.

INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVES
ARIEL B. CASILAO
CARLOS ISAGANI T. ZARATE, EMMI A. DE JESUS, ANTONIO L. TINIO,
ARLENE D. BROSAS, FRANCE L. CASTRO AND SARAH JANE I. ELAGO

AN ACT DECLARING MANILA BAY AS RECLAMATION-FREE ZONE
AND PROVIDING PENALTIES THEREFOR

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Philippines in
Congress assembled:

SECTION 1. Reclamation-Free Zone. — The sea waters of the Manila Bay Area
is hereby declared a reclamation-free zone. All forms of reclamation activities
that will affect a part of or the entire Manila Bay Area, as delineated in the next
Section, are hereby prohibited.

SECTION 2. Manila Bay Area delineated. - The Manila Bay Area is the
portion of the Luzon coast stretching One Hundred Ninety kilometers (190 kms)
and covering a total area of One Thousand Nine Hundred Ninety-Four square
kilometers (1,994 sq. km.), bounded in the east by the Sierra Madre, Caraballo
in the north, Zambales in the northwest, Bataan in the west, Batangas in the
south and the West Philippines Sea in the southwest, located between 120° 14’
and 121° 24’ E and 13° 58’ N and 16° 8’ N, including its waters located between
120° 28' E and 121° 15’ E and 14° 16’ N and 15° N.

SECTION 3. Coverage. - The prohibited act mentioned in Section 1 hereof
includes all activities that seek to fill, cover or overlay the sea waters of the
Manila Bay Area with soil, gravel, stones or other similar materials to create
artificial land space beginning from the coast; or any activity that will construct
artificial islands or floating structures, build overhang infrastructure above the
sea waters or will result in the receding of the sea waters and the surfacing of
the soil beneath the sea waters.

SECTION 4. Disapproval of all planned reclamation projects - All plans for
reclamation projects pending with the office of the Philippine Reclamation
Authority or any government agency or local government unit are hereby
disapproved.


SECTION 5. Revocation of issued ECCs and reclamation permits. - All
Environmental Clearance Certificates issued by the Department of Environment
and Natural Resources and all permits issued by any government agency or
LGU for the purpose of reclaiming a part of or the entire Manila Bay Area are
hereby revoked.

SECTION 6. Disapproval of pending applications for ECCs and
reclamation permits. - All applications for Environmental Clearance
Certificate pending with the DENR and all applications for permits pending with
any government agency or LGU for the purpose of reclaiming a part of or the
entire Manila Bay Area are hereby disapproved by operation of this Act.

SECTION 7. Penal provisions. - Any person, natural or juridical, or any public
officer who violates the provisions of this Act shall suffer the penalty of
imprisonment of not less than six (6) years but not more than twelve (12) years
and a fine of not less than Five Million Pesos (P5,000,000.00) but not more than
Fifteen Million Pesos (P15,000,000.00).

Any public officer who violates this Act shall also be dismissed from public
service and perpetually disqualified from holding public office.

If the offender is a juridical entity, the highest ranking official and the members
of its board of directors or trustees who authorized the violation shall suffer the
penalty imposed under this Act. The operator or owner thereof shall not be
allowed to operate similar establishment or enterprise in a different name or
style or in a different location.

SECTION 8. Implementing Rules and Regulations. - Within sixty (60) days
from the passage of this Act, the DENR shall promulgate the necessary rules
and regulations for its effective implementation.

SECTION 9. Separability clause. - If any provision of this Act is declared
unconstitutional or invalid, other parts hereof not affected shall continue to in
full force and effect.

SECTION 10. Repealing clause. - Any law, presidential decree or issuance,
executive order, letter of instruction, administrative order, rule or regulation
contrary to or inconsistent with any provision of this Act is hereby amended or
modified accordingly.

SECTION 11. Effectivity. - This Act shall take effect fifteen (15) days after its
publication in the Official Gazette or in a newspaper of general circulation.

Approved,