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2002年8月9日
サンロケダムの貯水中止を！
サンロケダムの操業をストップして！
On the 8th of August, at 1:00 in the afternoon, the impounding of water in the San Roque reservoir began. Unless the impoundment is aborted, the eight small villages located within the 1,600-hectare reservoir area will be completely inundated within the next several months, at a rate that will depend on the incidence and volume of rainfall in the Agno river's catchment zone.
Hardly anyone lives in those villages anymore; nearly everyone has been forced to leave them. But gold panners still come and go. And beyond the eight villages, many others, larger and more populous, will be victimized by siltation and upstream flooding over the coming years, at a rate that will depend on the incidence and volume of erosion and dam-sediment spillage in the Agno river system, on which eight mine tailings dams, as well as the Ambuclao and Binga hydropower dams, remain standing.
Last June, the national government and the NPC indicated that they would comply with requests for them to defer impoundment until they had satisfactorily addressed all the issues raised by the people who stood to be adversely affected by it. One issue was economic displacement and the lack of livelihood alternatives for gold panners operating in the San Roque reservoir area. Another was the various forms of displacement that would be suffered by the indigenous communities of the lower Agno river basin.
It is treachery on the part of the national government and the NPC to have allowed the San Roque Power Corporation to start impoundment at this point, when the aforecited issues have yet to be resolved. And it is a manifestation of their keenness for profit that the Euro-American and Japanese companies who are part of the SRPC have pushed through with impoundment regardless of those issues.
The SRPC stands to net more than a billion dollars within the first twelve years that it will operate the San Roque dam and power plant. This is guaranteed by its contract with the NPC, which provides that it will be paid about sixteen million dollars a month for generating anywhere from 30.5 to 54.2 gigawatt-hours of electricity, and nine million dollars for each month that it can produce no electricity because of low rates of water flow along the Agno.
The national government's present leadership has itself found the SRPC's contract as an independent power producer to be fraught with financial and legal issues. It should have put on hold all preparations for power production at San Roque while it was seeking a resolution to those issues. It could have used such a step as leverage for forcing a renegotiation of the SRPC's contract - if it was seriously concerned about the impact the enforcement of the contract would have on the Filipino consumers and taxpayers who would doubtless be forced to assume the burden of paying the SRPC.
But the national government's leadership has apparently been less concerned with the welfare of Filipinos than with the losses its foreign friends in the SRPC would sustain from any delay in dam and plant operations.
Under attack from electricity consumers for pursuing IPP projects that produce unneeded electricity, the national government has recently used irrigation development to justify the San Roque project. It has ignored concerns raised about the quality of irrigation the San Roque reservoir would provide given the toxic levels at which pollutants would be concentrated in this reservoir. It has glossed over the National Irrigation Administration's own admission that the operation of the San Roque dam was neither the only nor the best means for solving the problem of erratic water supply to farms located on the floodplains of the Agno.
The national government should come to terms with and admit the fact that, in embarking upon and pursuing the San Roque project, it has made a gigantic error in judgement.
In truth, many of the issues that have been raised in connection with this project are issues beyond resolution. Because of their massiveness, the dam and its reservoir could not have been installed without dislocating nearly a thousand people. Because of their location, the dam and its reservoir cannot be commissioned without inducing increased siltation and upstream flooding along the Agno, and setting off a process that will result in the displacement of many thousands more. Again because of its location, the reservoir can store up nothing but polluted water, laden with mine waste and tainted with the poisons used in chemical-based vegetable production. And once more because of its massiveness, the dam could only have been built with large foreign capital. Because of their very nature, the large foreign capitalists could only have been drawn into the project if they were assured of raking in superprofits. It is doubtful if, in any renegotiation of their contract, they will agree to smaller returns on their investment.
The national government and the NPC could have aborted the project early in implementation, once it had reassessed this in the light of the issues raised by affected citizens. Now its only option would be to work out means for cutting these citizens' losses.
The national government should prevent the dislocation of additional people by getting reservoir impoundment aborted. It should prevent the exploitation of electricity consumers and tax payers by working for a nullification, rather than a renegotiation, of the SRPC's power production contract.
Shalupirip Santahnay Indigenous People's Movement
Itogon Inter-Barangay Alliance
Tignay dagiti Mannalon a Mangwayawaya iti Agno (Peasant Movement to Free the Agno)
Alyansa dagiti Pesante iti Taeng-Kordilyera (Alliance of Peasants in the Cordillera Homeland)
Cordillera Peoples' Alliance
プレスリリース （2002.08.09）
「フィリピン・サンロケダム 抜き打ちで貯水開始」
https://FoEJapan.org/aid/jbic02/sr/press/20020809.html
地元の住民組織からの声明文 （2002.08.05）
「貯水予定地の破壊と強制立ち退きに訴えたサンロケパワー社」
https://FoEJapan.org/aid/jbic02/sr/statement/20020805.html
FoE Japanから日本政府／国際協力銀行へ（2002.08.09）
「貯水停止と融資凍結についての要望書」
https://FoEJapan.org/aid/jbic02/sr/letter/20020809.html
地元の先住民族・住民グループおよび国際環境団体からの要望書 （2002.08.12）
「サンロケダムの貯水中止を！ サンロケダムの操業をストップして！」
https://FoEJapan.org/aid/jbic02/sr/letter/20020812.html
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