BAGUIO CITY?Roads that brought Cordillera villages a measure of progress have also been responsible for the denudation of the region?s vast watersheds, compelling the Department of Agriculture to replace them soon with a motorized tramline.

The DA introduced its major program on Wednesday to the Cordillera Watershed Summit, which tackled a proposal to tax low-lying provinces for water discharged from the mountains.

The fees would help reforest these watersheds, according to the summit organizers.

Studies show that highways into forestlands of Benguet, Ifugao and Mountain Province have sped up the expansion of farms into protected forests, said Samuel Peñafiel, Cordillera director of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

He said the summit organizers are not averse to roads, but government engineers have to start infusing watershed conservation in preparing the construction of new mountain highways.

The roads that lead to Mount Data in Bauko, Mt. Province, for instance, have been centers of debate for decades when farmers began buying up new lots and stripped off forests because the roads gave them direct access to these resources.

Mount Data is a protected park straddled by three Cordillera provinces.

?Roads are beneficial but when placed in the wrong place, they bring in pesticides, increase traffic of illegal loggers and traffic of vegetables grown where forests used to stand,? Peñafiel said.

The DA concept paper presented by the DA acknowledged this predicament.

The concept paper noted that the demand for farm-to-market roads has increased, and political leaders often accommodate these projects because of the high profile legacy these infrastructure projects represent.

?Given this mountainous terrain, road construction seems impossible and, if pursued, has an adverse effect on our environment,? the paper said.

?These [roads] trigger erosion and clear forests or mountain covers [that stand in their] path. These roads are sometimes not reliable. These are washed out or [erode] during harvest season [costing farmers huge] income losses,? it said.

The erosion often impacts heavily on the river systems which discharge to farmlands of Northern Luzon, it said.

An alternative farm tramline system operated by cable wire, on the other hand, is more economical than conventional road construction, the DA said.

Trams have existed for decades, and have been harnessed by the old Benguet mines, until the DA began repairing and revitalizing local community tram systems.

Unlike roads, these tramlines could be turned over to the communities for maintenance and operation, the DA said, freeing government from future maintenance costs.

?The government should conduct an inventory of all agricultural tramlines and treat them as public investment projects,? so these facilities could be improved to not only ship out commodities but also human passengers. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon