MANILA, Philippines - The Court of Appeals (CA) dismissed a writ of kalikasan petition filed by residents of Magallanes Village, in Makati City and Villamor Air Base, Pasay City that sought a halt to the installation and operation of high-voltage power lines in these subdivisions.
Forty-one residents of Barangay 183, Zone 20 in Villamor, Pasay City, and Magallanes Village, Makati City, filed the petition in November against the Manila Electric Company (Meralco), Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal (NAIA) 3 administrators, Manila International Airport Authority, and the Barangay chairman and council members of Barangay 183, claiming the electromagnetic fields (EMF) produced by the operation of the power lines and the Extreme Low Frequency (ELF) generated by the 115-kilovolt high-voltage wires could lead to "cancer, leukemia in children, Alzheimer's disease, depression, miscarriages, headaches, memory loss, insomnia" and other diseases.
But the court's 24-page decision promulgated last January 20 by the former 17th Division junked the petition stating that petitioners were not able to establish a solid link between the EMF and its impact on petitioners' health and the environment.
"In failing to prove the causal link between the illnesses feared and the EMF generating from Meralco's [Manila Electric Co.] power lines, petitioners have, in fact failed to discharge evidentiary burden," the decision read.
"There is admittedly a glaring absence of any allegation directed against violation of petitioners' right to a balanced and healthful ecology (or the right to health, as insisted by petitioners) and the purported environmental damage arising from the installation and energization of Meralco's sub-transmission lines," the decision read.
The court also found inconclusive, reports of studies on EMF and ELF and its impact on health presented by petitions.
"At best, the data gathered are purely statistical in nature with no scientific evidence or conclusion as to whether the leukemia suffered by the subjects had been caused initially by their exposure to EMF-ELF or the direct impression of some other factor, environmental or otherwise," the decision read.
Petitioners cited Presidential Decree No. 856 or the Sanitation Code of the Philippines, a provision of which states that "high-tension transmission lines shall never pass overhead or underground of residential areas."
But the appellate court ruled that "the construction of the poles and the energization of the sub-transmission lines are far from unauthorized or unlawful. In fact, they are more of a necessity than anything else."
Meralco's evidence indicating that the power lines emit a magnetic field of 16.7 milliGauss (mG), "way below the 833mG exposure limit set by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection and adopted by the Department of Health (DoH)" was given weight by the appellate court as well as compliance certificates obtained by the power distribution firm from the local government of Pasay City, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and DOH. (report from Ina Reformina, ABS-CBN News)
