San Roque Dam:
Gov't Losing Sight of Dam's Multipurpose(ness)
Part of the government’s reasons for pushing the controversial San Roque Dam project despite strong opposition to it is that it would irrigate thousands of hectares of Central Luzon rice land. Yet while the dam itself is already halfway finished, the irrigation component has yet to be started.
By
ARTEMIO ALEGRE DUMLAO
SAN MANUEL, PANGASINAN—Government
seems to be losing sight of the multipurpose(ness) of the US$1.2 billion San
Roque Dam project in San Manuel, Pangasinan with the irrigation component of the
project yet to hit its stride even as the power component of the project is
nearing completion.
San Roque Power Corporation (SRPC),
the main builder-consortium of the controversial dam, said last week that the
irrigation component of the dam has yet to be started while the power component
is already halfway through.
Project site manager John
Lockwood said that the concreting of the spillway is already half finished. The
Englishman also said that the powerhouse is 60 percent done and the actual dam,
the second biggest in Asia once completed in 2002, is already 40 percent done.
Lockwood pointed out that
although the irrigation component of the project was originally within SRPC's
scope in the feasibility study, "it never went far as part of the
contract." The Philippine government, he claimed, wanted to take over the
irrigation component even though SRPC was willing to pursue it since they would
already have had the equipment on-site.
According to the National
Irrigation Administration (NIA), the dam project is expected to irrigate some
50,000 hectares of rice land in Central Luzon, the country's rice bowl, aside
from supplying power for the Luzon Grid.
Engr. Melchor Borromeo of the
NIA-Cordillera admitted that the government does not at present have the
financial capability to pursue the irrigation component that is supposed to be
implemented by the cash-strapped National Power Corporation.
While the status of loans for the
separate irrigation component loan is unclear, SRPC's Lockwood claimed that they
never encountered difficulties in loan releases from creditor bank Japan Bank
for International Cooperation (JBIC) despite a very strong anti-dam lobby in the
Japanese Diet. Anti-dam groups have pressed for a halt to loans for the project
because of the social and environmental costs to indigenous communities along
the Agno River down to Pangasinan.
Anti-dam groups led by the
Cordillera-based and church-led multi-sectoral group Movement Against the San
Roque Dam and All Mega Dams (MASRDAM) and the militant group Cordillera Peoples
Alliance (CPA) have misgivings about the dam. They question why the dam
continues to be built when its supposed beneficiaries will end up losing their
ancestral lands and indigenous environment, and when even the irrigation
component may not even push through.
"This proves how the project
is really seeing its role in the next few years," said Mary Carling,
spokesperson of the MASRDAM.