THE National Power Corp. (Napocor) is not keen on proposals to decommission the power-generating component of the San Roque Dam, as advanced by Pangasinan mayors, since this is not the best way to prevent flooding in that province.

Napocor spokesman Dennis Gana said on Tuesday in a Palace news briefing that decommissioning the generator facility could result in a short power supply in the Luzon Grid as well as government capacity to repay financing institutions that funded the dam, among others.

In a separate development, a Senate panel will review the interim protocol that the energy department directed the Napocor to craft on the release of water from the dam during heavy rains—to avert a repeat of the October 6 midnight release of water that suddenly swelled the floodwaters in Pangasinan.

“A lot is at stake if you decommission the dam....Decommissioning is not a very good way of addressing the issue of flooding. In fact the dam helps in mitigating the flooding,” said Gana.

He said San Roque Dam irrigates Pangasinan and Tarlac, and provides 400 to 500 megawatts “at any given time” to various parts of Luzon, “so you would lose that capacity if the dam does not operate.”

He said that as a power-generating structure, the dam contributes .0025 centavos per kilowatt it produces to fund “various projects” and provides employment to the local community.

Gana added, “Of course, you have to answer to the financing institutions that have provided funds for this project. How are we going to pay if it’s not earning? So definitely these are the things we have to consider.”

He blamed freakish weather and not the San Roque Dam intrinsically that caused massive floods in Pangasinan for which no one was prepared for, because no one anticipated typhoon Pepeng would dump rains “equivalent to about 203 percent of the average for the past 15 years.”
                 

Gana said moves to prevent another calamity as massive as the one created from Pepeng “should be made scientifically, and not in haste, and not based on fear but on recorded, reliable, historical information.”

He said Napocor has asked the National Institute of Geological Sciences at the University of the Philippines in Diliman to help improve its protocols for dam management during bad weather.

He also said local officials should not train all their guns on Napocor since it is only a dam manager, while the local executives are responsible for communities, especially those living in flood-prone areas who should have been prevented from residing in those risk areas.

“The people are under the jurisdiction of the local governments. Napocor has no jurisdiction over the communities. We are just dam managers. We manage the dam, and the local officials manage the people living there,” said Gana.

Senate to review dam protocol

The Senate Oversight Committee on Climate Change is set to review the Department of Energy’s interim protocol on the safe release of water from dams operated by the Napocor during typhoons.

“I still have to peruse the technical details of the interim protocol as submitted to my office by Energy Secretary Angelo T. Reyes. But I recognize the reason cited by the DOE  [Department of Energy] in promptly coming up with an interim protocol—that of a new typhoon expected to hit the country,” Sen. Loren Legarda, oversight committee chairman, said.

Legarda’s committee is conducting a series of public hearings on the devastations caused by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng.

She had earlier suggested that concerned agencies draw up a permanent protocol on the warning system and the proper release of water from dams, not only for those controlled by Napocor. Such protocol must be forged with the consensus of experts, the government, all interested parties and the general public, she added.

At last Friday’s oversight committee hearing, Legarda gave Napocor until November 30 to come up with a permanent protocol on the release of water from its dams.

The senator noted that the DOE interim protocol ought to have provisions on the issuance of clear warnings by the Napocor and other government agencies well in advance of any water release by dams.

She said her committee, guided by geological and other experts, will look more thoroughly at the protocol, including the guideline issued by the DOE on the release of water specifically from the San Roque Dam in Pangasinan.

“The DOE had called for lowering water level at San Roque Dam from 280 meters above sea level to 278 MASL, after which further release of 500 cubic meters per second of water is mandated in the event of typhoon to ensure that the 280-MASL level is no longer breached,” she said.

It was noted that the release by the San Roque Dam of 5,000 cms of water at the height of typhoon Pepeng at midnight of October 6, when water level at the dam reached 285 MASL, had been largely blamed for the flood that inundated a big part of Pangasinan.

The senator stressed that the gradual release of the water from the San Roque Dam could have prevented the disaster that struck Pangasinan and other parts of Northern Luzon when the Agno River was swamped by the sudden release of water from the dam.