Anti San Roque Dam drive on in Baguio

By WENDY ATUBAN
www.nordis.net

photo by Marv Terceño

BAGUIO CITY — Less than two decades ago the opposition to the San Roque mega dam was at its height, now with the massive flash flood that hit nearly the whole province of Pangasinan recently, the protest is being revived.

Armed with protest streamers and placards and carrying with them relief goods, the Bayanihan Alay sa Sambayanan (BALSA) and the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan conducted relief operations in two separate disaster-stricken barangays here while calling for a wider support to decomissioning the dam which is allegedly the cause of the massive flooding in Pangasinan.

The two-day activity dubbed as Lakbayan para sa Kalikasan Laban sa San Roque Dam, started in Pangasinan on Thursday and climbed to Baguio on Friday. The activity which aimed to build opposition to the multi-million peso dam extended help in the form of relief goods to more or less 600 typhoon affected families in barangays Pinsao and Irisan here.

Participating in the said activity are different organizations including Kalikasan, Health Alliance for Democracy, scientist group AGHAM, the Promotion of Church Peoples Response, Cordillera Peoples Alliance and Tongtongan Ti Umili.

Bayan has been calling for the decomissioning of the dam ever since the flooding instigated the local government officials of Pangasinan to demand for the decomissioning of San Roque, the largest dam in South East Asia.

Earlier non government organizations have asserted that the dam’s priority in generating power defeats its flood-control objectives. Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes, Jr. stated in their press release, “the dam is not a necessary and indispensable project. There can be other power-sources that need not entail the construction of a huge dam. The government proponents appear to have been more interested in taking advantage of the foreign loans form Japan that were available for the project at the time.”

Reyes added they are consulting lawyers to see possibility of filing charges against the administartion of the dam. He said San Roque (administartion of the dam) has criminal liability. # nordis.net