The fate of a 300-megawatt coal-fired power plant being proposed here now hangs on the future of the city’s drinking water source.
Pilar Braga, chair of the Sangguniang Panlungsod’s committee on power, transportation and communication, said the city had commissioned an independent hydrology expert to study the possible effects of the coal plant’s operation in the city’s drinking water source, particularly in Barangay (village) Binugao in Toril District.
A hydrology study that the project proponent, Aboitiz Power Corp., earlier submitted to the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) claimed that the plant’s use of 1,500 cubic meters of fresh water per day would not jeopardize the community or harm the city’s aquifers.
The Aboitiz study prompted the EMB to issue an environmental compliance certificate for the coal-fired plant.
Manuel Orig, APC first vice president for Mindanao affairs, had presented the company’s ECC issued by DENR on Sept. 9 to the city council on Friday last week, in an effort to convince councilors to reclassify Binugao into a protected heavy industrial zone from its current light-medium industrial zone.
Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who earlier supported the project, questioned the company’s proposal to source the water requirement of the coal plant’s steam engine from fresh groundwater sources. He expressed fears that this could adversely affect groundwater supply for future generations.
Duterte had asked Aboitiz to source the company’s freshwater requirement from the surface water of the nearby river flowing through the Binugao area.
Orig, however, said the company had ruled out the possibility of using sea or surface water, saying this had yet to be treated and thus would jack up the generation cost of the plant. “We need water that is clean so that it will not cause the engine to rust,” he said.
“Sourcing the water from the sea means we have to treat it and would cost us seven times the usual and sourcing it from the nearby stream will cost us three times the usual cost,” he said.
“In that case, it will also jack up the cost of power we’re going to sell,” he added.
The city council asked Orig to present the hydrologist who conducted the study that the EMB used as basis for issuing the ECC, but he said he was not in the country anymore.
“We had difficulty getting the hydrologist who conducted the hydrology study as he is already consulting in Vietnam,” Orig later told reporters.
He said Aboitiz has decided to hire another hydrologist from Mapua Institute of Technology to conduct another study on the sustainability of groundwater supply in the city.
“Only when the city council would be totally convinced, can we proceed reclassifying the Binugao area where the plant will be situated from light-medium industrial to protected heavy industrial zone,” Braga said.
Orig said the water sourcing issue would certainly delay the reclassification of Binugao, but Aboitiz remained hopeful that the construction of the coal-fired power plant would finally start within the year.
“We have optimistic, conservative and pessimistic schedules,” he said.
“Based on our optimistic schedule, we are already delayed, on our conservative schedule, we’re late but on our pessimistic schedule, we hope to start the project before the year ends,” Orig said.