THE DAVAO City Water District and Hedcor, Inc., a subsidiary of Aboitiz Power, can co-exist and separately develop Tamugan River for their own purposes – as source of surface water of DCWD to supply the unserved and underserved portions of the city in the north starting from barangay Buhangin up to barangays Bunawan and Lasang and as source of hydro electric power of Hedcor to be distributed by Davao Light and Power Company, Inc., its sister company.
This was the claim of an official of the Davao City Agriculturist Office during a watershed forum sponsored by the PCEEM-Davao (People Collaborating for Environmental and Economic Management in Davao), erstwhile known as the Philippines-Canada Environmental and Economic Management Project, at the University of the Philippines-Mindanao’s Anda campus.
Contrary to the publicized stand of the DCWD telling Hedcor to leave Tamugan River alone, the water district and Hedcor can actually co-exist, on condition that both entities can put in place mitigating measures that would ensure the sustainability of the watershed, according to Dario A. Divino, a member of the technical staff of the City Agriculturist Office,
The entry of DCWD and Hedcor in the watershed areas, for hydropower and water generation, respectively, is expected to impact heavily on the sustainability of the watershed area. The question that now lies in everybody’s mind is: Can the watershed area further accommodate these new developments without the people of Davao suffering from its effects in terms of a decline in the supply of potable water?
“In every development there is really an impact on the environment and this is true whether we allow the DCWD or Hedcor in the area,” Divino admitted. “It can take the form of people displacement, disturbance to the environment, however, there is a way for the two to co-exist and share the resources of the Tamugan River,” he added.
Agricultural production
Divino also opined that the contemplated projects of Hedcor and DCWD in the Tamugan River will not highly impact on the city’s food production.
“Most of our farmers are not relying on irrigation in these areas, but, by the grace of God, they continue to enjoy year-long rainfall which sustains their farming activities,” he said.
While the extraction of water from the Tamugan River tends to lessen the supply for a while, he said, both companies can help the government implement the Rainwater Collection Ordinance (which was recently approved by the city council) by providing farmers with rain harvesting materials.
Divino said it is also imperative to train the farmers to go into organic farming, adding that both Hedcor and DCWD can help in this advocacy.
He bared that the city government has put into place several programs expected to help produce food for Davao, including the city’s corn program with a total of 1,116.64 hectares planted, mostly in the third district, by 4,739 farmers,
Likewise, the city government has a rice program involving over 1,630 hectares of land and benefiting 1,600 farmers in the districts of Tugbok, Toril, Baguio, Marilog, Calinan, Talomo, Buhangin and Paquibato.
“There is also a vegetables program of the city which includes the Gulayan sa Barangay, the P1.2 million vegetable production project involving 32 farmers on 10 hectares, and the P2.7 million vegetable enhancement program,” Divino said.
Divino said they are encouraging farmers to go into organic farming to help sustain our watersheds, and have already provided training to 774 farmers in the third district. Among the organic farming methods they are teaching the farmers are the natural farming technology system-biodynamics and vermi-composting.
City Agriculturist Rogelio Tabay in a phone interview later said that Divino’s statement on the DCWD-Hedcor conflict in Tamugan in the watershed forum was just his own opinion. He said his office, or the city government for that matter, still have to discuss the issue and formulate an official stand.
One opinion during the forum coming from the militant participant that Hedcor’s water extraction activity will affect the level of surface water only for a while, but the company will later return such water to the river after using it. On the other hand, DCWD uses water from the Tamugan River to supply household and commercial users without assurance of returning it to the Tamugan River system. She however said that what should worry Dabawenyos is the existence of banana plantations in the area which use nematocides and other chemicals to protect their produce.
Lia Jasmin Esquillo of Interface Development Interventions, Inc (IDIS) has warned that the water crisis being experienced in Manila and parts of Luzon could also happen here if the major alterations in the city’s landscape as well as the continued encroachment by agricultural developments using chemicals continue.
According to another forum participant, Davao City’s third district alone has over 5,000 hectares of banana plantations and over 1,000 hectares of pineapple plantations, although not all of them are on top of the recharge zones. A recharge zone is an area of land through whose soil, acting like a sieve, water from rainfall and other surface liquids seep down to the aquifer through holes or cracks. Trees with deep roots in recharge zones hold the soil and help rainwater refill the aquifers in the course of time.
In addition, there are thousands of hectares more of small farms planted to other crops near or within the watershed areas of the city.
Divino said these four farms have no environmental compliance certificate (ECC) as they are not required at all due to their sizes.
Lawyer Raymond Salas, Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panligal (SALIGAN) Mindanao coordinator, said the ECC is a requirement under Presidential Decree 1586 which allows the President to proclaim certain projects, undertakings and areas in the Philippines as environmentally critical. Under this, projects within the said areas are required to secure an ECC before projects start.
“But, before an ECC is issued, the proponent has to submit an environmental impact statement (EIS) if the project is environmentally critical or located in an environmentally critical area,” Salas said an EIS should include among others, the environmental impact of the project, the adverse environmental effect that cannot be avoided, an alternative to the proposed action and a determination that the short-term uses of the resources are consistent with its long term productivity.
We have already sounded the alarm that converting these areas to plantations spells disaster which we might suffer sooner than later,” Esquillo said. “If nothing is done to change this, Dabawenyos can look forward, albeit with gloom, to destruction not only of its watershed system but also of its environment.” Lovely A. Carillo
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