Most Philippine mines for extracting iron, nickel, copper, gold, silver and other ores are popularly known to operate with scandalous disregard for the environment. Their poisonous wastes and tailings get washed off into rivers and sea coasts, killing all life that come into contact with the poisons, including marine creatures within square kilometers of seas. The mines' land-surface scouring methods carve out thousands of hectares of forested mountains and plains which are never reforested after depletion of their mineral ores. The mines' local and foreign owners are so powerful and bribe-savvy, many say, that no laws can be passed and implemented that are able to curb the ecology-killing processes. Mining companies (almost all capitalized by foreigners) have ensured that their representatives, some of them heads of mining clans, are permanently ensconced in Congress to make sure all bills and bureaucratic appointments that endanger mining interests do not pass. Confl