Itogon seeks revival of own water district

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LAUREN ALIMONDO
April 16, 2018
THE Municipality of Itogon in Benguet is seeking to establish its own water system.

Itogon Mayor Victorio Palangdan said they aim to revive the Itogon Water District (IWD) and
are looking for investors to develop the water source and distribution.

"We want to revive the water district, we funded its administrative expense and we are inviting
investor," said Palangdan, adding that in the long run, it will be an income generating project of
the municipality like of La Trinidad.

The town has allotted P500,000 for its administrative expense.

In 2015, Pampanga-based Balibago Waterworks System Incorporated proposed about P60

million to P80 million as an initial budget for the project but Palangdan said the water company
withdrew its proposal.

He said Manila Water is studying the source of water in the Benguet town.

The eyed water district is set to supply nine barangays of the municipality with a population of
55,960 with Tuding and Ucab top as most populated barangays.

"We only have spring distributed to few while bulk are buying water from private delivery trucks
and people are having a hard time prior to the expense," he added.

The first-class municipality with the largest land area in the province of Benguet has 30,000
registered voters relying on communal irrigation systems for their water supply.

In February 28, the municipality, through a resolution, sought for a copy of the identified
projects and locations of all irrigation system funded for Itogon.

The Department of Agriculture-Cordillera has listed proposed projects, under the province of
Benguet projects for Itogon and Kabayan that amount to P45 million.

https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/428695
In Cordillera, water becomes source of feuds
By: Vincent Cabreza - Reporter / @Inquirer_Baguio
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 11:03 PM August 16, 2011

Atok, Benguet—Farmers in Bontoc, Mt. Province, began the summer by planting rice in their
stonewalled terraces in April, much earlier than usual.

This is because unresolved boundary disputes over water have forced some villages to manage
their irrigation needs better by taking turns planting to stretch supply until the rains come.

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Households in many parts of the country are barely aware of how water sometimes becomes a
reason for conflicts. Unusual weather patterns have altered the rainy months in the Cordillera,
leaving dry some communities that follow a traditional rice planting cycle, government data
showed.

But the example of Cordillera farming communities express how any neighborhood can quickly
adapt to a new environment fraught with weather that has become unpredictable, according to a
climate change initiative of the University of the Philippines (UP) Baguio.

Since April, Mayors Gregorio Abalos Jr. (La Trinidad), Florencio Bentrez (Tuba) and Ruben
Paoad (Tublay), all of Benguet, have been talking and exchanging insights as to how best to
address their problems because of urbanization, population growth and an erratic weather.

They joined a set of stakeholders’ workshops organized recently by the UP Cordillera Studies
Center (CSC) for the five Benguet towns that surround the summer capital.

The UP center has embarked on a climate change program which aims to develop a database of
weather data and technology to help guide government officials.

Reuben Andrew Muni, a UP Baguio sociology lecturer, and Maileenita Peñalba, a political
science lecturer, said the initiative decided to focus first on a proposed resource-sharing group
called BLISTT. The acronym stands for Baguio City, and the Benguet towns of La Trinidad,
Itogon, Sablan, Tuba and Tublay.

Muni and Peñalba presented to the BLISTT mayors an outline of common issues about potential
water conflicts and provided insights as to how practical water-sharing initiatives may help solve
these problems.

Reservations

Abalos said many of the BLISTT towns expressed reservations about “sharing” because of fears
they would lose out to highly urbanized Baguio with its high consumption needs.

The discomfort about sharing “have taken a political tone,” which would discourage the average
policymaker, Muni said.
In Sablan, for example, officials who supported a proposal to build an ecological landfill for
Baguio were not reelected in 2010.

Baguio’s problems have also affected its neighbors. Its only dump has been shut down but
garbage left there threatens to bury a village in Tuba, while pollution along its creeks always
finds its way down the Balili River in La Trinidad.

Baguio is also seeking new water sources but plans by a mining firm to supply it with water have
been derailed by legal problems and objections from communities in Itogon, a mining town.

The Baguio Water District (BWD) projects demand in Baguio to reach 66,871 cubic meters of
water each daily by 2012, when all it can supply is 65,000 cubic meters, said Salvador Reodica,
BWD assistant general manager.

In May, however, Peñalba said they found case studies of arising water problems for
communities where water used to be abundant.

Tublay’s town proper also suffers from water shortages. Like Baguio, water delivery trucks
service households in that town to augment their daily supply.

What UP Baguio provides on the table is the science behind the erratic weather, and the numbers
still indicate that Baguio and its neighbors also receive some of the highest recorded volume of
rainfall, which should negate their water supply problems, Muni said.

On July 15, Abalos and government engineers inspected the Balili River, which flows down to
La Trinidad from Baguio. The waterway has been classified as “biologically dead” due to
pollution discharged into it.

Abalos hoped to reactivate a joint task force representing his town and the summer capital that
was put up in the 1980s to rehabilitate the river.

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