Other resorts deserve Boracay-style closure

Fairly or not, Boracay Isle is to be closed to tourists for half a year. Nearly one in two resorts, diners, and shops supposedly are violating sanitation and environment laws. But they’re simply too many – 2,142 businesses in all – with no sewerage, spewing waste straight to the wade waters, and encroaching on beachfronts, roadways, and wetlands. They should be demolished, and the officials who let them thrive punished. Still the compliant establishments will be swept in a general cleanup. Thirty-five thousand employees will be laid off. Even airlines and travel agents, fishers and boatmen on the mainland will lose incomes. Boracay rakes in P5 billion a month, but not this May-October. So decrees President Rodrigo Duterte.

It will take longer than that for the resort paradise to regain its image. “A cesspool,” Duterte colorfully has derided Boracay’s waters. Far too long have delinquent businesses dirtied the sea, that coliform teems in sickening levels, according to health experts. Green slime stains the famed powdery white sand beach. Mangrove forests and brook sides have been trespassed. One resort brazenly built a giant jacuzzi on a coral rock offshore, and from it concreted a bridge to the cabañas.

“Top-class services for the world-class island” is how authorities envision Boracay to become. Immediate rehab of waterworks and sewerage will coincide with evictions from no-build zones. Thenceforth, tourism licenses shall depend on applicants’ environmental clearance, and commerce’s impact on eco-systems. Boracay is good only for 30,000 dwellers, yet hosts 75,000 permanents who service two million yearly tourists. Its daily garbage is three-and-a-half times the dump’s capacity. “Sustainability” was the buzzword for Boracay five Presidents ago in the 1980s. The few settlers then resisted, and drove out development planners. Self-regulation apparently failed. Now everyone, including foreign and domestic tourists, will be driven away.

Boracay is a microcosm of Philippine tourism mismanagement. The 7,641 islands feature the same sun, sea, and sand – and sloppy sewerage. Land zoning is a mess. Where resort owners conscientiously treat waste, neighboring factories and slums spoil the air and waters. Planning is ignored. Noisy, dirty, risky tricycles and jeepneys ruin the tranquility; so do overnight videoke bars. In popular destinations like Panglao in Bohol, Coron and El Nido in Palawan, and Puerto Galera in Mindoro, huts and hotels illegally have risen right on waterfronts. In mountain resorts in the Cordilleras, Southern Tagalog, and Bicol, trees are felled and slopes quarried. Roadsides to Baguio, Tagaytay, and Lucban are choked with squatters, in shanties as well as multi-story structures.

Even government-run travel attractions are unkempt. At the Philippine Tourism Authority beach club in San Fabian, Pangasinan, the main rest room is rickety. Stinky loos usually forebode shoddy kitchens. True enough, cats and cockroaches abound there. In Bohol’s Balicasag Island the beachfront cottages, facilities, and service are worth the trip and the charge. But behind the compound employees and boatmen have erected shacks with no toilets or septic vaults. Pigsties add to the stench.

The diligence of the Departments of Environment, Local Governments, and Tourism in Boracay begs replicating nationwide. Negligent, extortionate local officials everywhere must be sued for allowing the mess. Resort owners voluntarily must fix up their locales. Tourists need to be discriminating, and report to authorities obvious breaches of health, sanitation, and environment rules. Videos and critiques on social media would warn other travelers against violators of the 30-meter easements from shorelines and riversides, intruders in forests and marine sanctuaries, and illegal builders on cliffs and reefs. Exposés could scare businesses and local officials into compliance.

It’s ironic, though. Tourism depends heavily on environmental regulators. Yet they’re the very officials who allow irresponsible mines to destroy forests, mountainsides, rivers, lakes, and foreshores.

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