ALIPING. RICHARD BALONGLONG/ INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON
BAGUIO CITY—The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has been implicated in the Santo Tomas watershed controversy for which a Baguio lawmaker faces charges for polluting a city water source.
Baguio Rep. Nicasio Aliping Jr., in a July 17 counteraffidavit to a criminal complaint filed against him by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), said it was a DPWH road-widening project over the 20-kilometer Santo Tomas national road that triggered the erosion that polluted Amliang Creek inside the watershed.
Aliping and three Baguio contractors are facing forest violation charges filed on June 6 by the DENR in the office of the Benguet prosecutor, after Baguio Water District (BWD) complained that an illegal forest road project had eroded, contaminating its Amliang water source there.
The watershed straddles Baguio City and Tuba town in Benguet province.
The DPWH had sent the DENR a detailed report to deny Aliping’s allegation, according to David Buliyat, Benguet district engineer.
Buliyat said the agency had contained all loose soil from the project and “had not dumped them over the cliff,” contrary to Aliping’s claim.
In his affidavit, Aliping denied carving out a 2-km road along the sides of Mt. Cabuyao that destroyed over 700 grown trees and saplings.
He said he was “singled out for political persecution” when attention should have been focused on the DPWH’s “widening of the Mt. Santo Tomas national road, which started two years ago and where several trees were cut and damaged and large volumes of earth, rock and soil cascaded into the Amliang (Creek) thereby polluting it.”
Buliyat said the Santo Tomas national road had been around for decades but was improved beginning in 2012 through three road packages. The last package, implemented by the Benguet district engineering office, was completed in June, “at the same time the controversy over the illegal Santo Tomas road erupted,” he said.
“We sent DENR maps and engineering specifications to show our project had not polluted the Amliang waterways,” where BWD gets water for 20 communities in Baguio and Tuba.
In his affidavit, Aliping admitted having undertaken excavations for a small road leading to a proposed ecological park on watershed land he bought in 2003.
“The excavation and leveling [of terrain] within my property is different and distinct from the road opening … outside my property … I have nothing to do [with that road project] and the allegedly felled or uprooted trees along the road,” he said. Reports from Vincent Cabreza and Kimberlie Quitasol, Inquirer Northern Luzon