Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Issue No. 25                        August 5-11,  2001                    Quezon City, Philippines







Join the Bulatlat.com mailing list!

Powered by groups.yahoo.com

Farmers hit San Roque dam project for damage to livelihood

By Northern Dispatch/Bulatlat.com

SAN MANUEL, Pangasinan --- Some 150 farmer-members of a peasant alliance along the Agno River picketed the San Roque dam project site here last July 27, blaming the project for damage to their water sources and the consequent ban on gold panning.

Members of TIMMAWA (Peasant Movement to Free the Agno) complained about a ban on placer mining in and around the San Roque project site, which was enforced by the National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR) and the San Roque Power Corporation (SRPC) starting July 18.

TIMMAWA claimed that the ban deprived 1,000 peasant households in this municipality of the only means of livelihood, especially in the wake of the devastation of their farms brought about by Typhoon Feria.

TIMMAWA said the heavy rains during the typhoon forced NAPOCOR to open the gates of its silt-logged dams along the Agno river - at Ambuclao in Bokod and at Binga in Itogon, both in Benguet. This resulted in widespread flashfloods downstream.

TIMMAWA further claimed that the floodwaters damaged a small, 20-year old irrigation dam that serviced an estimated 4,500 hectares of riceland here in San Manuel and in neighboring Asingan town. Some 3,650 peasant households had become entirely dependent on irrigation from this dam, since the construction of the San Roque dam had destroyed other water sources in their area, TIMMAWA said. The loss of the irrigation dam meant that local farmers could no longer do any wet-rice production.

The flashfloods also ravaged the ricefields of San Manuel and surrounding towns. On some fields, the flood destroyed ripened rice of the outgoing season that was ready for harvest, while on others, it destroyed young rice seedlings still waiting to be transplanted for the incoming season.

Faced with the loss of both their crops and their sole irrigation source, San Manuel peasants were left with only gold panning as means of livelihood. Until the NAPOCOR-SRPC ban, each panner was earning a minimum of about P1,740 a day.

Responding to the farmers' picket, SRPC staff talked to TIMMAWA representatives within the dam site compound. However, the officials of NAPOCOR and SRPC were not around. The SRPC staff thus failed to make commitments on the demands that TIMMAWA presented.

The SRPC staff said they could not make any commitments on lifting the ban on gold panning. Atty. Adonis Cillias of the SRPC's Quarrying Department, which is tasked to enforce the ban, said the ban was based on safety considerations. The gold panners could defy the ban, he explained, but then the SRPC would not be able to ensure their safety or to compel its subcontractor, Raytheon, to pay them any compensation in case they meet an accident.

Although at first they denied any obligation on SRPC's or NAPOCOR's part to repair the irrigation dam, the SRPC staff promised to have their company see to this within the next two to three weeks.

The TIMMAWA representatives pointed to a long list of promises that the builders of the San Roque dam had already reneged on. This included the compensation, still largely unpaid, for properties and livelihood that the dam's construction had cost the people of San Manuel and the adjacent municipality of San Nicolas.

Simplicio Sicuan, spokesman of the Itogon Inter-Barangay Alliance, a TIMMAWA affiliate, said that the dam project ought to be suspended until the compensation due all dam-affected people was fully paid. "Once the construction is completed, we would no longer have any chance of compelling NAPOCOR to pay," Sicuan pointed out to the SRPC staff. "That's what happened in Itogon with the building of the Binga dam."

Sicuan noted that in the case of the Ambuclao dam, NAPOCOR only paid the families whose lands were immediately submerged. But as time passed, Sicuan recalled, siltation caused the submerged area to triple. When the affected people demanded that NAPOCOR pay them too for their submerged properties, the company claimed that the siltation was not NAPOCOR's responsibility, but simply the natural result of the ageing of the soil around the dam. When the Ambuclao residents pointed out that the river would not have filled up so early if it had not been dammed, the NAPOCOR merely ignored them, Sicuan said.

When Sicuan reiterated his appeal for a halt to the San Roque dam's construction, the SRPC staff replied, "This is a matter that only our superiors and the government can address." Northern Dispatch/Bulatlat.com

 

 


We want to know what you think of this article.