Gateway greed

I have been to Boracay enough times to remember what it looked like before the island became a cautionary tale in flip-flops. I saw it during its peak years, when the beach pulsed day and night with tourists, music, booze and commerce.

I saw it again after Duterte shut it down in 2018 and ordered its rehabilitation. I was among the few journalists allowed back early. The difference was startling.

The water was clear again, no longer the murky broth the sea had degenerated into before the shutdown. The beach seemed to exhale. Gone was the faint stink of sewage and stagnant drainage that once hung over parts of the overbuilt island.

Today, people have forgotten just how bad things had become before Duterte finally called Boracay Island a “cesspool.”

Fecal coliform levels in some areas reportedly reached 18,000 MPN per 100 milliliters. The acceptable level is 400. Untreated wastewater was flowing into the sea.

Illegal sewer connections proliferated. Wetlands had been paved over by resorts and commercial establishments. The drainage system was overwhelmed. Boracay’s groundwater reportedly emitted hydrogen sulfide — the smell of rotten eggs.

Then came the carrying-capacity study.

A study by the University of the Philippines Los Baños concluded that the island could sustainably accommodate around 54,945 people at any given time — tourists and locals. Before the shutdown, the population had reportedly swelled beyond 70,000.

That happened when the tourism stopped being managed and started being milked. Now comes San Miguel Corp. with a P7.78-billion bridge project connecting Boracay to Caticlan under a 30-year concession agreement.

Predictably, the sales pitch is wrapped in the language of progress. Connectivity. Accessibility. Development. The usual corporate incense burned before every major infrastructure project.

But San Miguel was never a charity. It is a conglomerate that does not spend billions out of patriotic affection for island convenience.

The company stands to earn not only from bridge tolls, but from terminal operations, parking, commercial leasing, advertising, and transport-related revenues tied to the bridge system. In effect, this is not just a bridge. It is a privatized gateway to Boracay.

And if there is one thing San Miguel understands very well, it is rent-seeking — using its immense economic and political influence over government to secure projects, then extracting enormous profits from the public, the Philippines’ future be damned.

Anyone who regularly drives through Luzon’s tollways already knows the formula: ever-rising toll fees, bottlenecks that somehow survive billion-peso expansions, RFID systems that malfunction at the exact moment traffic peaks, and motorists forced to pay premium rates for the privilege of crawling through congestion.

The genius of tollway economics is that the public eventually stops noticing the bleeding. A hundred pesos here. Two hundred there. Until entire salaries quietly evaporate into toll booths. Now imagine applying that same business instinct to Boracay.

The faster San Miguel recovers its investment, the better for San Miguel. Which means more vehicles, more tourists, more cargo, more commercial activity, and more pressure to maximize throughput into an island that already nearly collapsed from overcapacity once before.

Supporters say the bridge will merely replace the boats. That is nonsense. 

The current jetty-port system naturally regulates movement. Ferries, queues, schedules, environmental fees, and weather conditions create friction. Boracay still feels physically separate from the mainland.

A bridge changes the psychology entirely. Suddenly the island becomes a land trip. And once Boracay becomes easy, unrestricted and frictionless, the temptation to overexploit it returns almost immediately.

That is the real danger here. Not the bridge itself, but the business model behind it. Boracay nearly drowned once in sewage, overdevelopment, and corporate appetite masquerading as tourism growth. One would think we learned something from 2018.

Apparently not.