Three corporations, Benguet gov’t race to corner Baguio water supply deal

By Vincent Cabreza

Philippine Daily Inquirer, 6 February 1999, p. B2

BAGUIO CITY – Three rival corporations and the Benguet provincial government are staking a combined P5 billion in a race to build the first bulkwater industrial complex that will tap the Cordillera rainforests to supply water to this mountain resort city.

French-Filipino consortium Compagnie Generale des Eaux-Aboitiz, Australian-run Super Max and Benguet Corp., the country’s oldest mining firm, will raise a P50-billion industry "all to feed the water demands of Baguio," said Teresita de Guzman, general manager of the Baguio Water District.

The city has been a consistent economic magnet because of the investments pouring into its expanded commercial districts although the major factor here has been the development of the 270-hectare Camp John Hay special economic zone.

The projected commercial growth would demand an additional 10,000 cubic meters of water each day, escalating an already improbable demand for 500,000 cubic meters of water here, De Guzman said.

Corporate rivalries, however, are fueling inter-town spats over available water resources this early because consortiums willing to invest as high as P2.5 billion here are limiting their sights to only three sources of domestic water.

"In fact, the provincial government has become a rival, instead of the very mediator who can placate these water feuds," a BWD source said.

Key to the budding industry is the Cordillera itself.

The country has 30 million hectares of forestland but about 15 million hectares of these are concentrated in the Cordillera mountains, according to Dr. Rogelio Acosta, national watershed protecion expert of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

"This is why the Philippines has classified these mostly virgin lands in the Cordillera as a major watershed basket servicing Luzon," he told watershed experts from China, Jordan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Laos during a two-week watershed course sponsored here by a Swedish research group, SCC Natura.

The conference was held at the Baguio Country Club.

International experts say the country has not been maximizing the rainwater output from these watersheds, whch feed most of the creeks and gullies that flow down to farmlands in La Union, Pangasinan and Central Luzon.

BWD signed a joint venture contract on Thursday with the GCE-Aboitiz consortium. The financiers have signed a marketing deal with the Tuba (Benguet) government to develop the Bodacao Falls to supply the city’s daily consumption of 500,000 cubic meters of water.

The same consortium has mapped out a water deal with another Sablan town, about 11 kilometers northwest of the city.

Their closest rival is a proposed joint venture between Super Max and the Benguet government. This deal aims to explore the 50-yar old Ambuklao hydropower dam in Bokod, Benguet, as a domestic water sources that will later sell to the city.

Initial studies financed by a French government grant in 1994 placed costs to ship water from Ambuklao tot he city at P2.3 billion although Gov. Raul Molintas had asked Super Max to finance a new study.

Benguet was also eyeing Tuba town as a possible source for its own project, directly competing with the BWd project, sources claimed.

Molintas wrote Baguio Mayor Mauricio Domogan last week to pormote the Benguet bulkwater project as the city’s major water supplier.

Benguet Corp. recently applied for water rights to more than 22 creeks and small riverlines inside the mining town of Itogon in a bid to also develop raw water sources that could be contained in abandoned open pit mines there and that could later be sold to the city.

But Itogon Mayor Cresencio Pacalso said they would challenge the plan of Benguet Corp.

"The city was never designed for 300,000 people and corporations see that as a starting point for a budding new industry here because the BWD had been unable to stretch the water," De Guzman said.

The average personal daily requirement of a resident here had been computed at 120 liters. BWD, however, can meet only half of that requirement.

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