Wednesday, July 15, 2009 [ sunstar.com.ph ]
POWER firm Hedcor’s plan to develop a mini-hydro project along the Amburayan River in Kapangan, Benguet earned support from the local government and an indigenous peoples’ (IP) group.
Peter Begawen, one of the council of elders of the Kapangan Kankanaey-Ibaloi Indigenous Peoples Organization (KKIIPO), said communities have no objection to the project as he dispelled the supposed opposition of another IP group.
He said the KKIIPO is supportive of Hedcor’s mini-hydro plan.
Municipal officials and representatives from the villages, which would be affected by the proposed mini-hydro construction, raised no objection to the project.
Hedcor president and chief executive officer Rene Ronquillo and other company officials recently trooped to Kapangan for a dialogue between the local government and village representatives.
Ronquillo told local officials that much as the company wants to pursue the project, the firm is hindered by the absence of an endorsement from the Department of Energy (DOE) from pushing through with the development works.
The DOE endorsement is a vital requirement that must be issued to Hedcor before the firm could start any work with regard to the proposal. It is supposed to be furnished the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) for the Free Prior Informed Consent or FPIC process could start.
Without the FPIC, Ronquillo said Hedcor could not even start to conduct a study regarding the mini-hydro plant put up along Amburayan.
“We would be very happy to start conducting the studies now, but we still have to undergo the FPIC process,” he said.
Ronquillo also clarified that Hedcor is not diverting the water from Amburayan to Bakun, which technical personnel from the firm earlier explained to be physically and technically impossible as Amburayan is located in a lower elevation than that of the power plant intake in Bakun.
Begawen, in a separate interview, said the Amburayan Ancestral Landowners Association Inc. (AALOI), which raised its objection to the supposed diversion of the river, was not against Hedcor’s entry to Kapangan.
“It was a result of a miscommunication among us, the IP groups,” Begawan said, adding that the group was created mainly to protect the water resource of Kapangan from any exploitation.
“It was not clarified that what the (AALOI) was upholding was the protection of Amburayan from any diversion, and not actually the development of mini-hydro (along the river),” said Begawen. (Jane Cadalig)
Published in the Sun.Star Baguio newspaper on July 16, 2009.
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