Following 30-day ultimatum to Baguio City gov’t : Benguet folks close Asin power plant

BY ISAGANI LIPORADA

TUBA, Benguet – Following their 30-day ultimatum for the city government of Baguio to vacate the Asin Hydroelectric Plants here, residents of Barangay Nangalisan here closed gate valves of a water reservoir leading to Plant 1 causing the city lost income of P144,000.

This, as Benguet Electric Coop. manager Gerardo Versoza said the power firm could supply adequate electricity for the city and Benguet even if the Asian plants were shut down.
Residents earlier demanded that the city government pay them for use of their lots which the power plants traversed but this resulted to a deadlock in negotiations.

At noon on Dec. 3, guard-on-duty Bonifacio Copero phoned city administrator Peter Fianza informing the latter that Macwid Lamsis, Delfin Lamsis, Moris Polon, and Wilton Benawe allegedly diverted water supply from the plant, causing a 2-day shutdown of the facility.

There are three plants composing the AHP system. Plant I currently produces 700-Kwh per hour or P3,000.00/hour in terms of monetary equivalent.

Fianza is chief of the technical working group, tasked by the Asin Management Committee to address various landowners’ claims in the area and to prepare recommendations on how to best operate the hydros.

The Tadiangan-Nangalisan Hydro Ancestral Landowners Association led by Roger Sinot manifested “loss of interest” in sitting down with city managers to iron out a deal in behalf of Asin landowners affected by AHP operations” claiming the city dilly dallied in negotiations.

The group also demanded that the city vacate from the area including “improvements that traversed [TNHALA] members’ properties” within 30-days from receipt by the city of the Nov. 3 TNAHLA resolution.

Fearing greater losses for the city, Fianza on Dec. 5, accompanied by his staff and three Tuba policemen, drove the 3 km unpaved road, crossed a hundred feet high hanging bridge, and trekked nearly a kilometer trail from highway to reach the reservoir to sit down with Lamsis’ group.
Lamsis and his cohorts later agreed to maintain status quo in the Plant 1 operations. They voluntarily desisted from further causing monetary damage to the city by aiding Fianza and his men restore the valves.

Earlier in a letter dated Dec. 4, Fianza informed Lamsis’ group of the legal consequences of the acts they allegedly committed.

“As you may please understand,” Fianza wrote, “the city has shown interest to sit down with all claimants despite that fact that it is only now, after the city took over operations of the plants starting December 2006, that claims for payments surfaced.”

“However,” he added, “with (TNHALA) and now your group by your acts, recently manifesting disinterest in continuing talks with the city, claimants are now left without any other options except to go to court. Consequently, the city can not also do anything except to wait for the court shall direct to be done,” he added.

“For sure,” Fianza said, “you will be advised [by a lawyer] that every possessor has a right to be respected in his possession and being a claimant, you cannot take the law into your own hands… You must resort to judicial process.”

Meantime on their way back, Fianza was chanced by Sinot and his men who claimed, “they were on their way to the reservoir to ensure the safety of Lamsis and his associates.”

In a brief chat, Sinot reiterated their demands and warned that if the city doesn’t act on their resolution, they will stage another shutdown of the AHP.

Fianza answered that there are remedies made available in law that TNHALA may take to assert their claims.

He added by the tenor of the TNHALA resolution, Sinot’s group was delving towards legal battle and not a peaceful out-of-court resolution of claims by landowners that TNHALA only claims to represent.

“Even if you owned a land,” Fianza said, “you cannot just eject somebody who built a house upon it. You must take the legal process or otherwise be liable for damages.”

Fianza gave word that the ManCom will soon answer TNHALA’s resolution early next week. On the other hand, TNHALA expressed desire to go back to the bargaining table but limiting talks on payment for the use of their property.