City finalizing settlement of Asin Hydro issues

The local government is finalizing the necessary settlement of various issues and concerns besetting the city-owned Asin minihydro power plants to ensure that it will not encounter problems once it offers the said plants to private companies interested to rehabilitate, upgrade and improve the existing facilities.

City Administrator Bonifacio dela Pena stated that the city has no problem on the ownership of Plant No. 2 because of a previous court ruling that the local government owns the said property where the said plant has been established.

However, he admitted that the problems on ownership by the city lies in Plant No. 1 where 99 percent of the area occupied by the said plant is declared by the Palos family and in Plant No. 3 where the property occupied by the plant is owned by the municipality of Tuba, Benguet.

The city administrator explained that in the case of the Palos family, initial talks with the representatives have shown that the family is interested to allow the city to use the same for the operation of the power plan while in the case of the Tuba municipality, the interest of the municipal officials is on how much the local government will be getting as share once the said plants will be operational when there will be a company that will be tapped to rehabilitate and upgrade the same.

Dela Pena also requested the City Social Welfare and Development Office (CSWDO) to conduct a social scoping in the areas traversed by the lines of the minihydro power plants to validate whether or not there will be additional claimants that were not included in the previous list of claimants that were already earlier compensated by the city.

He claimed that the local government will be preparing the terms of reference for the conduct of public bidding on the proposed rehabilitation and upgrading of the city-owned Asin minihydro power plants once all the prevailing issues and concerns shall have been given appropriate action so that the city will be able to present to the interested companies that there are no more obstacles in the implementation of the long overdue project to make the facility operational. Baguio City is the only local government in the country that owns renewable energy plants, particularly the Asin minihydro power plant, which was turned over to the city as the same had been built during the time of the American colonization of the country. – Dexter A. See