‘Only God can stop San Roque Dam’

SAN MANUEL, Pangasinan — "Only God can stop the operation" of the San Roque multipurpose dam project.

Thus said engineer Laurencio Cornel, information, education and communication officer of the San Roque Power Corp. (SRPC), referring to the demands of the Tignay dagiti Mannalon a Mangwayawaya ti Agno (Timmawa) that the project be halted and the displaced folk be compensated.

Cornel said, "They cannot stop the operation of the dam. It has to operate because there is a contract between the government and the project developer and contractor. It’s really go. It’s only God who can prevent its operation."

The dam project, he said, is 99.8 percent complete and will be fully finished by December and operational by January next year.

The $1.2-billion project, constructed under the build-operate-transfer scheme, commenced on March 8, 1998.

Picket

Last Friday, Timmawa members picketed the provincial capitol in Lingayen to air their demands and denounce the alleged burning of 11 houses in Sitio Bolangit in Barangay San Felipe East, San Nicolas town last week.

Cornel, however, belied the burning of houses, saying the villagers voluntarily left the area with the assistance of the National Power Corp. (Napocor) and were even provided transportation.

"If (the houses) were burned, it was with their consent (so as not to delay the dam project)," he said.

He said there have been several meetings with Timmawa but that its demands were "unreasonable."

Cornel said the group is being supported or manipulated by some leftist groups which, he added, "have a different agenda."

Pat McAllister, president of SRPC, described Timmawa’s allegations as "false and without foundation" in a faxed letter to Presidential Assistant for Northern Luzon Renato Diaz.

McAllister said the Napocor purchased all of the lands comprising Sitio Bolangit from about 80 families there.

The sitio, he said, lies entirely within the reservoir being impounded by the San Roque Dam.

Compensation

"Each and every family was compensated for their land, houses, non-residential structures, crops and trees," he said.

He added: "As has been the case for the past several years, the allegations of Timmawa and its oppositionist affiliates are self-serving, lack credibility and are devoid of substance."

If completed, the 200-meter high San Roque Dam, located at the boundary of San Manuel and San Nicolas in Pangasinan and Itogon in Benguet, will be the largest private hydropower project in Asia and the 11th highest in the world.

The dam will generate 345 megawatts of power to be distributed to the Luzon grid.

It is 41-percent owned by the Japanese trading firm Marubeni; 51 percent by a subsidiary of US energy company Sithe Energies Inc., which is 29-percent owned by Marubeni; and the rest, by Kansai Electric, a Japanese utility company.