Upland Benguet folk invoke spirits’ blessings for mini-hydro project
Before sunrise on Saturday, a group of people gathered by the bank of Kipkipan River in Kapangan, Benguet, for two sacred rites, which they consider important and historic.
Kipkipan is one of five tributaries in the remote village of Pudong (population: 1,500) in Kapangan. The waterways are among the sources of the Amburayan River, which passes through Ilocos Sur before emptying into the West Philippine Sea.
The first rite was called “bayani,” during which Alsado A-at, a “manbunong” (also called “mambunong” or traditional priest), invoked and prayed to the “tumungaw” (spirits believed to inhabit the rivers and forests).
He wished and prayed that the two pigs sacrificed for the ceremony, along with jars of “tapuy” (rice wine) and money (coins and bills) offered, would appease the tumungaw.
The second rite was called “am-med.” Two pigs were sacrificed and offered to the spirits of ancestors as request for them to confer with the tumungaw and grant the prayers and wishes of the community, A-at said.
The main prayers and wishes of the community, which hosted the two rites, included safety, good health (for future workers) and the success of a planned mini-hydropower project.
The rites were meant to seek the permission and blessings of the gods and spirits for the project, said lawyer Cruzaldo Bacdoyan, chair of the newly formed Green Environment Indigenous Development Corp. (Geidco).
In celebration, community members danced the “tayaw” and “sadong” (which mimic flying eagles and other birds) to the beat and rhythm of gongs and “solibao” (native percussion instrument).
The music echoed to the surrounding mountains and sacred Kuwabao and other caves, which have continued to cradle the remains of the community’s ancestors.
Seal of approval
The rites sealed an earlier series of public consultations on the proposed mini-hydro project. The project was also endorsed by the governments of Kapangan and Benguet.
Bacdoyan and other leaders of the community-based Geidco have convinced their fellow villagers of the scheme and vision of the corporation. Under Geidco’s setup, each family head is a shareholder.
Bacdoyan said he and the other community leaders have studied the setup of other energy firms in the country and have concluded that the option they took was the most beneficial for the community.
Joel Alangsab, president of the Baguio City Association of Barangay Captains, agreed with Bacdoyan.
“This (Geidco setup) is better than those of other energy firms that share only a very minuscule part of their profits through the local governments’ share of the national wealth taxes,” said Alangsab, whose mother is from Pudong.
For Rodolfo Luna, a farmer and shareholder, the Geidco project will tap fully the water resource in Kipkipan. “Water here is just flowing anyway so using it to generate electricity is definitely an added value,” he said.
Projected power
The project targets to generate 4.8 megawatts of electricity. It seeks to build two plants: Pudong I, which aims to generate 3 MW, and Pudong II, which is upstream of the first plant and targets to produce 1.8 MW.
The two plants require no dams, which used to create apprehension because of other upland folk’s experience of displacement when two big dams—the 75-MW Ambuklao in Bokod town and the 100-MW Binga in Itogon town, both in Benguet—were built in the 1950s.
Instead, each of the two plants requires a small weir—more than waist-deep—to catch enough water which, conveyed through a penstock (gate which regulates water flow), turns a turbine.
Similarly, the elders of the community had seen how Americans taught how a waterfall could be harnessed to generate electricity for lighting at Camp Utopia, just a two-hour hike from Kipkipan, during World War II. The camp, at one point, hosted wartime President Sergio Osmeña, his immediate family and a few aides.
The two plants are projected to generate a net income of P105 million a year, Bacdoyan said.
Both require at least P600 million to build, which Geidco cannot afford. So Geidco partnered with an American company, which, Bacdoyan said, understood well their cause and was willing to put up the capital.
As Geidco continues to iron out the necessary paper work with the Department of Energy and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the project, barring unforeseen problems, will start construction within the year or early next year, Bacdoyan said.
But as community members are excited about the project, they have to address an apparent crucial issue—the expansion of sayote plantations in neighboring Barangay Sagubo, which forms part of the whole watershed that feeds the Kipkipan River and other tributaries.
Former Pudong barangay chair Ruben Salve acknowledges this problem. “But with the help of the DENR and civic groups, we are reforesting bald areas because rehabilitating watersheds is integral to the [Geidco] project,” he said.
And community members, being shareholders and stakeholders of the corporation, have established their own nurseries where they can get seedlings to plant when the rain comes in June.
“Our nurseries have seedlings of narra, pine, various fruit trees and Arabica coffee,” said Puyat Tula, a kagawad (village council member) of Pudong. “The beauty is that school children are helping maintain these nurseries.”
