CDCP, or construction development corporation of the philippines, was a government owned and controlled corporation established during the administration of the late president ferdinand marcos. it entered basay, negros oriental in the 70s and setup a huge mining operation consisting of 3 open pit mines to extract copper, molybdenum, gold, and silver, among others. it shutdown the mine sometime in the mid 80s, and most of its facilities and equipment (and mine waste) were abandoned and left to gather dust.
for pictures of our trip to the mill site, click here. for pictures from the open pit mines, click here. for pictures of the mine's effects on the local water, click here.
after the a tour of the first 2 open pit mines and the surrounding area, we head on to the 3rd open pit mine.
this is the road we had to pass through. this stretch was particularly difficult, so the 2 passengers (me and our guide) had to get off and walk.
after a memorably bumpy and painful ride, we reach the 3rd open pit mine.
it's relatively shallow, compared to the 2 previous open pit mines. they had just started digging this pit when the mine was shutdown.
looks more like mars than earth to me...
so this concludes our tour of the abandoned CDCP mine, a landscape of ambition and ruin, environmental damage and adaptation, poverty and greed, and the great lengths men go to to survive.
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