Samar town seeks investors to develop hydropower potential

SAN JUAN DE BUAN, Samar, Philippines – The mayor of this far-flung, fourth-class municipality wants a number of the fast-flowing rivers in his territory inspected for their potential to generate clean and renewable energy.

Mayor Ananias Rebato said they want the Department of Energy or the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) to survey the municipality’s five major rivers to determine if these can be harnessed to generate hydropower.

Rebato said they are open to any hydropower exploration activities to be conducted by interested private power companies, local or foreign.

“We have five major rivers here, and several falls, which we believe could be harnessed to produce hydropower. We’re hoping that either the DOE or the DOST can help us explore this potential,” Rebato told The STAR.

Rebato identified the major rivers in the municipality as the Blanca, the Dolores, the Oras, the Olot and the Las Navas rivers.

Rebato said they are somewhat cut off from the trade and commerce lanes in Samar, especially Catbalogan and Calbayog cities due to rough roads going into their municipality which lies in the heart of Samar province. He pointed out, however, that exploration activities, and hopefully the resulting hydropower production can generate revenues to allow them to build roads.

“Hopefully, we can attract investments into San Jose de Buan. We want to generate revenues so we can build roads and make it easy for our farmers to bring their produce to the markets of Catbalogan and Tacloban and even Cebu,” Rebato said.

San Jose de Buan is one of the fourth to sixth class municipalities in the country’s 10 poorest provinces covered by the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s extended Kapitbisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (Kalahi-CIDSS) program where communities are trained and then made to supervise various infrastructure projects funded by grants from foreign donor agencies like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and others.

The municipality was able to undertake infrastructure projects worth P6.855 million in the first cycle of funds given under Kalahi-CIDSS that started in 2011. There was a second cycle of funds that enabled the municipality to undertake eight projects worth P3.208 million.

For the first cycle, there were six projects namely, two one-classroom elementary school building construction projects in two barangays, the construction of individual sanitary toilet facilities in two barangays, the construction of two gravity-fed water supply system in two barangays, and the construction of another one-classroom school building.