Tollway won’t cause flooding, Payumo assures Bataan tillers

DINALUPIHAN, Bataan — Former Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) chairman and administrator Felicito Payumo assured farmers of Dinalupihan and Hermosa, two rice-producing towns in northern Bataan, that the P21-billion, 90-kilometer Subic-Clark-Tarlac tollway would not cause flooding.

Payumo told The STAR that the farmers’ fears have been addressed just like what engineers did in the Roman Superhighway connecting the Layac junction in Dinalupihan to the Bataan Economic Zone in Mariveles town when it was built sometime in the late l970s.

The tollway is expected to be completed next year.

Consultants of the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) and the Japanese government conducted dialogues with different farmers’ groups and residents to assure them that the four-lane tollway has been designed to protect hundreds of hectares of ricelands from rampaging floodwaters.

Provincial board member Orlando Miranda, chairman of the agriculture committee, said some farmers have questioned the construction of the tollway, which would cut across productive ricelands, fearing that it might trigger floods during the rainy season.

Dinalupihan Mayor Jose Joel Payumo said the tollway would pass through 16 of the town’s 34 barangays until it reaches Floridablanca, Pampanga.

The Dinalupihan portion has a length of 17 kilometers.

Payumo said the tollway project is now in full swing.

Some 50 farmers have urged Payumo to oblige the contractor to put up boxed culverts instead of concrete pipes in some portions of Dinalupihan to allow the free flow of water.