INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines—The contamination of a water source in this city due to an illegal road project linked to Rep. Nicasio Aliping Jr. has affected the supply of more than 20 villages here and some households in neighboring Tuba town in Benguet province, a Baguio Water District (BWD) official said on Tuesday.
Salvador Royeca, BWD general manager, said the city’s water distributor was readying charges against Aliping for violating the Clean Water Act of 2004 (Republic Act No. 9275) when loose soil from a road project in the Mount Santo Tomas watershed polluted BWD’s Amliang Dam 3 and three springs.
Aliping and three Baguio-based contractors were slapped with a June 6 complaint by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for illegally cutting trees and for the “unlawful occupation and destruction of forest land,” documents showed.
Royeca said Amliang Dam 3 produced 800 gallons per minute of water while the three spring sources produced 600 gpm.
BWD may also tap deep wells servicing other sections of Baguio to augment the need of the villages along Marcos Highway here.
Suffering the direct impact of the contamination are the villages of Sto. Tomas and Dontogan, some households along Adiwang Road and Balacbac Road, Green Valley Subdivision, Foggy Hills Subdivision and the Bureau of Animal Industry compound.
The contaminated supply may also affect parts of the villages of Poblacion and Badiwan in Tuba, Atab village, Teachers Village, Suello Village, Gulf View Subdivision, Sto. Niño Subdivision, households along Bengao Road, PNB Ville, some houses in Barangay (village) Bakakeng Central, Chapis Village, Sto. Rosario Village and Nevada Road, BWD said.
Also affected are some houses in QM Subdivision, Rock Quarry and on Legarda Road.
Replenishing the watershed forest would take time, Royeca said.
Aliping has requested for a technical case review on June 18.
Except for a statement last week that he would help fix the damage, Aliping has neither confirmed nor denied his alleged role in the development of the road that penetrated the watershed at Mount Cabuyao, which is behind Mt. Sto. Tomas.
Aliping was implicated because of an April 14 letter he supposedly sent to a local village chief, seeking the village council’s endorsement so he could acquire an excavation permit.
The DENR said the existence of the road was a violation of watershed laws. It said the presence of earth-moving equipment at the watershed was also prohibited.
The equipment bore the company names of Goldrich Construction and Trading, RU Aquino Construction and Development Corp., and BLC Construction and Aggregates.
“It is evident that the quantity and quality of work introduced to the area were not done by manual labor but undertaken by heavy equipment such as the backhoe loaders parked at the site [when the DENR inspected the road],” the DENR said. Reports from Jhoanna Marie Buenaobra and Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon