Recent news make the rounds of a new air quality monitoring station to be built in Bataraza, which is a mining town in Palawan. Most of the mining areas are located in the southern part of Palawan starting in Narra to Brooke’s Point to Bataraza.

Data below show Puerto Princesa which has an existing air quality monitoring system is not among the most polluted cities in the Philippines.

It comes as a major announcement not only due to the cost which is P6.4 million or that it is only the second of such monitoring station in Palawan after Puerto Princesa City but also due to the fact that it is borne out of the partnership of mining firms Rio Tuba Nickel Mining Corp., Coral Bay Nickel Corp., and Graymont Philippines, Inc.

And also most importantly, the monitoring station will be set up in Bataraza which is a mining community. It will make for a good argument that mining isn’t as bad for the environment whatever the results may be. Although we will still have to wait until the 3rd quarter to see the actual data.

And Puerto Princesa is also not among the cleanest city ranking based on air quality..

The equipment is called continuous ambient air quality monitoring station (CAAQMS) and is capable of monitoring particulate matter of 10 and 2.5 micron particle size. And it has an added feature of displaying real-time results of air quality that is visible to the public.

Puerto Princesa CAAQMS would be interesting to see or at least be included in the measurements for benchmarking.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is on top of this project.

There is a lot of potential that we could improve the Philippines’ air quality or at least Bataraza and Puerto Princesa to good from moderate. This could be a start. Again we wonder what happened to Puerto Princesa CAAQMS.