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TOP STORIES
SPECIAL REPORT: The economics of plantas in Nabunturan and where the town’s
gold is sold
JAN 6-12, 2011
By Cha Monforte
Located near to Reserba, Barangay Mainit, Nabunturan and delineated by theManatRiver, the mineral processing
zone seems to have its covert and lively presence having some 30 plantas of varying production tonnages.
The plantas are actually the carbon-in-pulp cynidation plants, locally fabricated plants that were
endogenously cocooned out and made effective during the over two decades of small scale mining development in Compostela Valley
Province.
Found mostly in Mainit mineral processing zone are 15-ton and 20-ton plantas. There are only
few 25-ton, 30-ton and 40-ton plantas.
Each planta has its set of crushers or ballmills which would mill and pulverize into sands the half
bags of raw gold ores, the locals called as puyong, from tunnels somewhere, before the sands are poured down to the plantas
for carbon-in-pulp cyanidation processing.
Allan Bollifer, plant manager of Kilovolt gold processing plant, said in an interview that at the average
the 15-ton planta and the 20-ton planta have capacity to load 280 and 400 puyongs, respectively.
For the 15-ton planta, in a six-day gold production processing cycle, the half bags of ores are first
milled for three days, after which the sands are loaded to the plantas for 72 hours of processing. The plant’s output
is “carbonized gold” or the gold captured by the carbon. The “carbonized gold” then undergoes the
“firing” or it, lying on kalans (ceramics), is blown over by fire so that when the carbon disappeared what remains
is the unrefined gold.
“For that, we charge P3,000 per ton or P45,000 for the 15 tons, besides that the customers pay
the cost of chemicals, cyanide and carbon,” Bollifer said.
Plantas are heavy power consumers. Kilovolt plant, for one, averages to pay Davao del Norte Electric
Cooperative P75,000 monthly.
Plantas are processing gold ores if possible on cash basis. “But if the miners ask for credit,
the planta gets the first priority in the order of payment or refund of overall expenses in tunneling after the gold is sold
and before the corpo (group of miners consisting of capitalist and manual laborers) have their net shares,” Bollifer
said.
“We would not also process if they have no assay rating of their gold ores. The assay rating
from known assay laboratories is needed to determine if they could pay us. A rating of 5 percent gold content of 150 grams
of gold ores is considered to be only good to pay for the funds invested by the tunnel financier, and none for the manual
corpo members. It can pay us though. A rating of 10 to 12 percent is at least good enough that corpo laborers can share a
modest income,” Bollifer added.
In his estimate, their planta has already processed gold ores worth not less than P50 million since
they started February 2010
“We don’t process graba (ores from tunnels) that turned out to be pughok (no gold
content). So we custom mill only those which have good assay rating to be sure that they (miners) can pay us,” said
Allan Bollifer, plant manager of Kilovolt gold processing plant located in Mainit mineral processing zone, home of at least
30 plantas of varying tonnages.
Other sources said that some of the plantas are owned by Korean and Japanese nationals and businessmen
from as far asDavaoCity.
But elsewhere in the province, being a mineralized region, plantas have been put up. Sources said there
said there are individual plantas in the nearby barangays of Kao, Tagnocon and up there in Masaraline barangays in Mawab-Maco-Mabini-Pantukan
territories, in barangays going to Maragusan as well as in other towns like Maragusan which has experienced a gold rush with
the opening of Pamintaran mining site. NewBataanis also known to have good mining sites in Barangay Camanlangan and nearby
villages and thus is also hosting plantas.
“Oresupplies from Pamintaran are no longer plenty, but more ore supplies from Tagnocon, Bugac
of Mainit, Log Cabin and Kabinuangan of Bukal keep on coming. Pag awop sa Pamintaran, mi-boom na pod ang Bangkal sa Tagnocon
(when Pamintaran goes bust, Bangkal goes into boom),” Bollifer said in vernacular.
He said that their planta is required of a dampakans, dug outs into where wastewater from the planta
exits and is trapped to be left open under sun exposure. He said that with it the wastewater from the plantas could not drain
into the river.
At press time, he said that prices of unrefined gold fetch to P1,400 to P1,500 per gramo in local miners’
lingo, which is actually 1 milligram of gold, “depende sa kilatis (depending on the goldsmith’s quality)”.
If refined, gold prices can go as high as P1,900 to P1,950 per gramo.
All roads of Nabunturan-processed gold would seem to lead to one direction where the established gold
buyers are-TagumCity. Among the gold buyers in the city, sources said, are Golden Palace Hotel, Eagle’s View Hotel,
Grandcop, RB, BL, Naro, Simbajon, Milay, Doreng’s, Hero pawnshop, and a diesel station near the terminal.
In time of “sharing” tunnel financiers and manual corpo members- mostly the abanteros would
accompany their gold to Tagum City and wait for the cash to be shared by them after the deductions of all expenses during
the production cycle, with usually the financiers getting two (or more) shares after the refund of his financing (“back
finance” as they say) and with each of the corpo members getting one equal share.
In reported sharings, it is a penny if corpo members get only P50,000 each for the three to four months
of mining cycle. But various reports said that there have been many sharings where each corpo member gets a bonanza at least
P100,000 equal share, or at times P300,000 equal share for each lucky corpo member. (cha monforte)
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NEWS
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| ATTY. DEXTER LOPOZ |
Comval BM lawyer send two Comvalenyos to law school as scholars
(May 31, 2009)- Compostela Valley boardmember and 2000 bar exam topnotcher Dexter Lopoz is
sending two of his provincemates to study law as his own scholars beginning this semester.
"Comval needs more lawyers now who would serve and work for efficient administration of justice.
Eleven years after the birth of our province, we only have one Regional Trial Court, abnormally saddled with over 3,000 cases,
more than half of which is handled by only two lawyers of the Public Attorneys Office," Atty. Lopoz explained the rationale
of his own law scholarship.
"Moreover, we have only three fiscals serving seven courts in the province and one court in
Tagum City, while the Dept. of Agrarian Reform's Bureau of Legal Assistants has only one lawyer," he added.
He said that lawyers serving these offices are heroically overworked and overstressed.
By now, his law scholars Ian Enterina, a resident of far-flung barangay Casoon in Monkayo,
and Francisco Maynaban, poblacion Compostela resident, are already enrolled with the newly-established law school in Tagum-
the Saint Thomas More College of Law, which commences its operations this semester.
As scholars, their matriculation and and tuition fees would be shouldered by the boardmember,
with the two having only to pass all their subjects in each semester to maintain their scholarship.
Lopoz said that his two scholars are only for the start and he planned to have one to two scholars
in each year of law studies as they move on in years.
The search of Lopoz law scholars had been going on two months ago and more than a dozen of
applications were received from usually fresh college graduates.
Lopoz picked Enterina and Maynaban as his start-up law scholars for their good grades in college
and high potentials in service orientation and community leadership. The scholar must also be a bonafide resident and registered
voter in the first district of Comval.
The law scholarship of a boardmember is known ot be first in Mindanao and in the country.
Atty. Lopoz placed Top 2 in the 2000 bar examinations and remains yet unsurpassed in
his record of placing the highest thus in the bar exams as a law graduate from a law school based in Mindanao. (Cha Monforte/Rural
Urban News)
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For comments and reactions, e-mail: comvalenyo@yahoo.com
VIEWS
OPINION: “The Submerged Valley Theory”
JAN 6-12, 2011
BLOGISTA
By Cha Monforte
As heavy rains pounded on since over the weekend to Tuesday, the sort of “conspiracy theory”
about the submerging of the fertile valley of the present Compostela Valley Province came back to my mind. Sort of a “bad
dream” coming back. But I should now share. The valley consists of the plains of the towns of the erstwhile First District
of the undivided Davao del Norte, less the highland Maragusan, or particularly the plains of the towns of Mawab, Nabunturan,
Montevista, Compostela, New Bataan and Monkayo. (The six towns plus Maragusan can be lumped to be called as the Comval mainland
to differentiate to Comval’s 3 coastal towns- Maco, Mabini and Pantukan, and the separated upland town of Laak. Really,
the province has this geographical infirmity when it was created in 1998 by act of gerrymandering. The geographical infirmity
is like its own birth defects). A day after the worst bardown-landslide-fire calamity that struck Diwalwal on May 30, 1989,
as a young covering reporter-editor of the defunct weekly Northern Star of Cesar Sotto Jr, father of now Nabunturan Councilor
Mario Angelo “Dodong” Sotto I got the opportunity to ride a military chopper and in the process got a wholesome
view of the fertile valley.
The valley looks like a stretched kawa where the poblaciones are and is dotted inside by smaller mountains
and hills while enclosing it are the towering mountains of Montevista going to Canidkid connecting to New Corella’s
high mountains then to the Masaraline (Mawab) mountains connecting to the apex of Maragusan and highland boundaries of Cateel
then to the high mountain ranges where the present Mt. Diwata sits and bordering Agusan del Sur. About 90 percent of this
enclosing high forest ranges, east of the national highway, is primarily threatened now by small scale mining as it is known
to be a mineralized, gold-rich region. Small scale mining via hardrock tunnelling has timber requirements to buttress portals
and adits (destinos), while often gold strikes happen in higher portions or top of the mountains where there is freezing temperature.
Needless to say, timber poachings and illegal cutting of trees have been happening inside and around
small scale mining areas. Against the poverty and lack of work and livelihood opportunities in the lowlands, and considering
the higher stage of development that the small scale mining has attained after over two decades of mining beginning in the
known Diwalwal and Boringot gold rushes, with the vast army of miners and even their children already knowing so much of the
trade, small scale mining will continue to scour, explore and mine Comval mainland’s mineralized forest ranges. The
march of the small scale industry to denude the mainland’s dominant eastern region is irreversible. This as illegal
logging activities and kaingin farming have been going on in the area.
On the other hand, the mainland’s western region, about 10 percent only, is also threatened by
illegal logging and kaingin farming. There is also now the propensity of the rural farmers and landowners in the highlands
to go for the production of cash crops- cardava bananas, coconuts while Stanfilco has long been on cavendish and senorita
banana plantation farming up there in Maragusan. It’s the natural tendency of the highland farmers to respond to their
stomachs by planting immediate cash crops. This propensity ultimately results to topsoil erosion, landslides and river siltations
that reach the downland communities in the mainland.
Back to my theory on submerged valley. It was in the 90s that backflows of riverwaters of the major
Manat River and Batoto River was first reported, I recall, and this submerged low lying areas of Monkayo, Compostela, New
Bataan and as far as the Barangay Magsaysay of Nabunturan. It was a portent of more floods to come caused by the backflows
almost yearly especially when heavy rains struck continuously for many days. Most of the mainland rainwaters drain to Agusan
river down to coast of Butuan City. Rainwaters from Masaraline (Mawab) highland areas drain to Hijo River down to the coast
of Tagum City, to Davao Gulf.
Now if the mainland’s dominant highland, mineralized region and forest are badly denuded in the
future, more volume of rainwaters from the mainland’s highlands would rush down overflowing the silted rivers but these
could not further surge on for an exit to Butuan’s coast as backflows have been happening already, with the water overflows
and water backflows meeting to create one Big Flood that would submerge the valley and what remains not submerged are the
dotting smaller hills and mountains inside the stretched kawa.
The Big Flood would strike like a thief in so disastrous scale victimizing millions of residents, giving
high death tolls with many climbing over their houses’ roofs, damaging billions of pesos for destroyed private properties,
valley farms and government infrastructures and installations- a worst scale the many never imagined. The Big Flood is the
flood that simultaneously hit the towns of Mawab, Nabunturan, Montevista, Compostela, New Bataan and Monkayo, with the floodwaters
covering almost the plains of the valley. Great heaven forbid- this should not happen. I’m no Nostradamus. I just
venture to pose my “Submerged Valley Theory” You may buy it or not. But my challenge now to authorities is to
put this in simulations via geographic information system (GIS) by UP urban planning experts now before it’s too late.
And we’ll see if this isn’t farfetched. (e-mail: chamonforte@yahoo.com)
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NEWSFEATURE
Machine inventions to make organic fertilizer, push MRF recycling deep fried in the backwoods of Compostela
Valley
By Cha Monforte
In his way of contributing to contain the country’s pestering waste management problem, an inventor
based in Compostela Valley has come up mobile machines that could potentially boost production of organic fertilizer and recycling
of biodegradable and organic materials for individual livelihood purposes.
Arthur A. Benedicto, an awardee inventor of the Dept. of Science and Technology, has recently designed and
initially sold his mobile “all-in-one” shredder, mobile organic fertilizer mixer and rotary aerobic composter
to various end-users including local government units of Panabo City, Asuncion in Davao del Norte, Trento, Agusan del Sur
and the Davao Oriental provincial government.
“The shredder can shred organic materials from kitchen refuse, banana stalks and
fruit peelings, rice straws to inorganic ones like plastics and cellophanes,” said Benedicto, an inventor who has long
been based in the province’s capital town of Nabunturan.
The plastic shreds can then be used as cushions for pillows or a mixture of hollow block,
the peelings or rice straws for fertilizer for one’s livelihood.
But to make complete organic fertilizer, the mixer and composter of Davao Techno Craft,
Benedicto’s firm, are best appendages to the shredder.
“The mixer on the other hand mixes for your own organic fertilizer formula in only
10- to 15-minute mixing time,” he added.
Both the shredder and mixer run on fuel-efficient 7-horsepower diesel engine.
The aerobic composter does a mechanized way of composting that shortens the composting
period by 50 percent.
“It is safe and contains and eliminates harmful bacteria to avoid spread of diseases,
besides that it eliminates the unwanted weed seeds,” he said.
A customer entrepreneur Ely Miguel in Trento town said that he has recently sold his first
1,000 bags of fertilizer in his new livelihood out of Benedicto’s shredder and mixer which he bought last September.
Benedicto’s latest three machines are now positioned in the market to be the processing
machine requirements of an operational material recovery facility (MRF) that has been required in every barangay or cluster
of barangays under Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, that until now lags behind in the
government’s full implementation target to address the country’s continuing garbage crisis.
“The cost of each machine is just within a small barangay budget,” he said.
ZERO-WASTE MACHINE
Also, Benedicto is currently completing an environment-friendly integrated gold processing
system ordered by a small-scale mining firm operating in the town’s Barangay Mainit mining district.
“Unregulated, polluting gold processing will take turn for a best with the processing
machine that uses the feed water over and over again… than allow it to exit to pollute our rivers, waterways and eventually
the seas,” Benedicto enthused.
In its complete design, the gold processing system rolls on 10-horsepower capacity with
two giant 10-ton per day ballmill ore crushers, filtering, sorting and draining components and cynidation leaching plant all
geared to extracting the maximum gold content of the ores under a most time-and cost-efficient and zero-waste management principle.
The system is apt for a province known of its gold-rich Mt. Diwalwal and many mineralized
districts where many gold strikes and finds by mere shallow diggings have been reported since the rise and intensification
of small-scale mining in the 80s.
Besides Benedicto has recently completed a portable abaca stripper with clutch and brake
as the government renewed its campaign in the recent years to boost abaca production in the countrysides.
BENEDICTO’S PASSION
Through all the 34 years that this eccentric inventor has
been tinkering steel and designing machines, and noted first by his agricultural machines, he has never moved out from his
headquarters from the backwoods of his town.
But his machines have already reached as far as Ecuador and Malaysia, and acquired or used
by multinational firms, agriculture department, local government units, cooperatives, private corporations and private end
users across the country.
Benedicto, now 52 years old, started from a scratch. He was barely 19 years old when he
decided to quit college and pursued his fling of inventing something to help farmers in his town.
He has been fond of tinkering farming machines of his late farmer father and for
being associated with rice farmers in youth days in the farm, two years after, on meager P1,000 financial support of an older
brother, he produced his own rice thresher out from metal scraps. He had it rented to the farmers for a fee.
PRODUCT RANGE
From the mid 70s he has produced this range of farming machines and equipment: turtle power
tiller, rice thresher, corn sheller, multigrain processing device, multigrain mechanical dryer, mobile multigrain winnower,
corn seed dryer, rice and corn milling set, coconut decorticator, feedmill and more in various designs and models at the urging
and want of buyers.
“These have been designed ala deep fried for coming out from ideas pursued with the
people in our localities,” he said.
“Yes, there’s that passion to invent, I am just working then and now, designing
is work and occupation to me,” says Benedicto, now evidently seen as the leader inventor-designer based midpoint in
the northern phalanx of Davao Region’s provinces of Davao del Norte, Davao Oriental, Compostela Valley and Caraga region’s
Agusan del Sur.
He got his first recognition as an inventor in 1987 when he was named as one of the national
awardees of DoST, and by the Philippine Productivity Movement for his multigrain processing device, a rice thresher and multigrain
sheller combined.
GUIDING RULE
He invents, designs and innovates whatever people want him to make based on their specifications
and suggestions.
“I come up a good design and better product since the idea is pursued collectively
with the ones who make the order. I always consult them. I make observations. I read a lot of books and reading materials
before. I weigh the pros and cons. I’ll tell the idea is not feasible when it isn’t feasible. I improve when there’s
room for improvement. It cannot be that inventors would not listen to others,” Benedicto said.
And how he thanks now that he can easily browse the Internet for layers of knowledge on
idea pursued in creating something good for country.
“I remain in my town since it’s here where I grew up and where my friends are,
and besides there’s now no barrier in communicating your ideas with the world outside,” he said. (Cha Monforte/Rural
Urban News)
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NEWS SITES FOR COMPOSTELA VALLEY
AND DAVAO DEL NORTE, PHILIPPINES
Philippine Daily Inquirer
The Daily Tribune
Sun.Star Davao
FEATURE
Destroyed by mine tailings a decade ago, Compostela Valley's Lake Leonard, the Crocodile Lake rehabilitates itself
By Charlie V. Monforte
NEW LEYTE, Maco, Compostela Valley Province (July 2003)- The diminutive but wondrously hidden Lake Leonard of Barangay
New Leyte of Maco town in this province has been persistently recuperating by itself for a decade now after it was left a
huge pond for the thousands of tons of toxic and poisonous tailings and wastes of a mining company.
Lake Leonard- named after an intrepid mining prospector Leonard Kniaseff in the pre-war period was also then known as
a Crocodile Lake, with its teeming crocodiles that once lived along with the wild geese, deers, boars, daytime bats, rare
flora and fauna,freshwater fishes and birds of various species.
At 2,572 feet above sea level, Lake Leonard is ensconced in a small valley atop Compostela Valley's southern mountains
straddling the highland barangays of the towns of Maco, Mawab and Maragusan. Then the lake was still about 11 hectares with
basin of about 194 hectares, although pioneer settlers here reckoned that the lake in 1970s covered at least 18 hectares.
The lake was smaller then until it widened with a basin covering some 210 hectares after the North Davao Mining Corporation
(NDMC)used it as a company's tailings pond for eleven years. That after relocating the entire Barangay New Leyte from the
once so fertile plain just beside the lake to its present location atop a nearby mountain.
NDMC stopped its mining operations since 1992 until present at Amacan area here due to losing mining ventures. It is now
a government subsidiary corporation under the Privatization Management Office (PMO), formerly the Assets Privatization Trust
(APT).
But prior to the lake's conversion as tailings pond the NDMC separately figured in a disastrous flashflood in neighboring
Amacan river that claimed over 200 lives on October 1980 during the preparatory works of the company. Residents here said
that the lake had at least doubled in size.
Nevertheless, it is still a dwarf compared to 4,000-hectare Lake Lanao and smaller than 304-hectare Lake Maughan of Tiboli,
South Cotabato. It is yet famous for being small and hidden by high mountains in the surrounding villages of Masara, Amacan
and New Leyte. It can be reached in a largely uphill drive via the all-weather barangay road passing Barangay Andili in about
an hours from Mawab poblacion, or through the landslide-prone and steeply village routes for an hour and a half from Maco
poblacion.
FOR AGRI-ECO-TOURISM
Maco Mayor Miller L. Alaba, MD said that since when the NDMC stopped its operations in the area since 1992 the lake has
been largely undergoing a persistent process of natural rehabilitation, adding that in fact it is now a good source of fish
of the host community.
He said that the host barangay and Maco local government have been launching community efforts in trying to restore and
promote the lake. While the municipality has already declared the lake and its environs as protected area and a lake development
plan is forthcoming, the mayor said that he is currently drumming up support to develop the lake area as a summer capital
in this part of the country to the likes of the known Tagaytay or Baguio.
Because of the lake's highland location, cool environment and picturesque view, an agri-eco-tourism themed development
can be pursued in the area, he said. Log cabins and cottages can be built around the lake and run by organized women, as its
widened water body is good for leisure boating, while a sustainable fishing, vegetable farming and raising of wild ducks can
be developed out from the lake's environs, the mayor muses in drawing out quick ideas in promoting the lake that was already
considered dead in early 1990s.
The mayor said he has recently extended a P200,000-worth of
agricultural support intended for vegetable farming for the barangay including the remaining arable land in the lake's
area, which was known as a vegetable bowl before it was destroyed then. He said that periodic tree planting activities have
been launched by the barangay and the municipal government in the area, and last June 15 Araw ng Maco the lake became for
the second year the starting point of the mountain biking race.
Since the recent years, the provincial government of Compostela Valley, in trying to restore people's livelihood derived
from the lake have been seeding it with tilapia fingerlings. In 2000 it made regular monitoring following a report that the
lake's huge water was spilling out from its basin as the NDMC dam in the lake was about to collapse.
The report however turned out to be false as confirmed by the inter-department and interagency task force created
by Gov. Jose R. Caballero. The task force found out that the dam is a highly engineered structure which has a spillway
for excess water to exit down to Masara river especially during rainy days.
SOURCE OF FOOD AND LIVELIHOOD
New Leyte barangay kagawad William Taculod, in an interview with this writer in the company of Ang Peryodiko Comval weekly
publisher Virgo Baguio last June 24 at the lake site, said that from 1993 to 1996 following NDMC's closure New Leyte villagers
did not eat fish coming from the lake fearing poisoned catch due to mine toxic wastes. Now everyday villagers get their viand
from the lake without
one them being poisoned or getting sick, he says.
Taculod recalled that during the NDMC's operations the barangay folk were prevented by the company guards not to fish
in the lake forewarning about mine tailings. Residents here recalled that they heard about cyanide being thrown in the lake
along with the mine tails. But Taculod said that there were still few brave souls in the barangay out of survival who dared
catch and still consume fishes
from the lake they used to subsist during the height of NDMC's operations.
He said that at present they find the lake's fishes are edible knowing that for sometime in the recent past some government
men had been regularly making laboratory tests and analysis on the lake water.
Taculod, who arrived in 1983 at the relocation site of the barangay New Leyte, reckoned that that the mine tailings and
earth that cascaded down to the lake basin and the nearby area where the original barangay New Leyte once stood could have
been of the same volume lost in
the sinking of the eroded mountain they called as PNOC, one of the hills surrounding the lake where accordingly the Phil.
National Oil Company once had its exploratory operations, and where later NDMC had its open-cut mining operations.
He recalled that when he arrived in the place he could no longer see the vegetables and low-growing crops of the settlers.
I could only see trunks of trees already buried by about two arms lengths of tailings. As years went by, the ground swelled
to the branches of low-growing coffee trees until taller coconut trees could no longer be seen as they were already covered
by earth tailings, mud and wastewater, burying what was once the location of the original Barangay New Leyte,Taculod recalls.
The once fertile lakeside plain is now a solidified empty land sparsely dotted by grasses. According to the residents,
the tailings spilled over the plain and fell into the lake basin resulting to the raising of its elevation and water level
and simultaneously increasing its basin coverage. The water of the lake is supplied by the cold and hot springs unscathed
by the tailings and is continuously replenished in its regulated flowing down through the dam'sspillway. Toward the late 1990s,
government men had been intermittently seeding the lake with tilapia, hito and mudfish fingerlings.
At present, New Leyte folk here have been obviously glad that the aquatic life has been restored in the lake. As it is
now, everyone can go on fishing freely or enjoy taking a bath at the lake the barangay consider as a collective public property,
while some enterprising residents have put up fish cages. The barangay council had also put up seven cottages for the residents
and visitors to use for outdoor gatherings. It was also learned that a barangay resolution was already passed last year asking
authorities never to use the lake again as a tailings pond by any mining company.
Lorna Varcas, council of women president and a fish vendor in the barangay, says that daily she is getting fish supplies
from to lake to vend for P25-P30 per kilo. She said that the barangay residents have no problem for their viand as they only
have to go on fishing or buy at her stall at low prices. She said that in the 1970 the original barangay used even earnings
from the lake fishes to finance for the salaries of their elementary teachers.
THE CROCODILE LAKE
The lake was once known as the Crocodile Lake for its hundreds by the thousands of crocodiles that keep the lake alive
with life, writer P.H. Ortega Jr. recalls his 1954 visit to the lake in his article Eulogy to a Dead Volcano, Lake Leonard
in June 1996 issue of Davao Development Newsette.
Ortega wrote the article on the anniversary date 42 years after he had gone to the lake on Sept. 11, 1954, along with
Percy J. Cutting,former general superintendent of Masara Mines, which was then managed and operated by the Samar Mining Company
(Samico), a subsidiary of Elizalde & Company and Anne Cutting, his wife, and Celedonio Nakpil, a company mining prospector.
According to Masara residents, Ortega was a personnel manager of the Inco Mining, predecessor of the Apex Exploration
and Mining Company, whose start-up copper mining operations in 70s to 80s had made Masara a boom mining village, some 5 kms
down west of New Leyte, just like the Amacan during the heyday of NDMC in the 80s to early 90s.
Ortega narrated that they proceeded on foot to the lake, hacking and slashing their way through densely forested mountains
and thick vegetation, holding on to dear life on thick vines while ascending and descending through deep ravines.
According to him, the lake in 1954 had then crystal-clear water that one could see the bottom full of seaweed looking
underwater plants, bats that darkened the skies as they flew in huge numbers. He describes that the lake was true refuge and
sanctuary of the wildlife deers, the binaws (as the Mansakas call them), wild boars, wild geese, the kalaws squawking, hoarse
voices mingling with those of the birds of different species that echoed and re-echoed throughout the lake area. The lake
then was surrounded by a truly virgin land, untouched by the advances of civilization.
He said that they went around the lake and saw several mounds of dried leaves where they saw crocodile eggs almost the
size of goose eggs and at the lake's edge the newly-hatched crocodiles some of which measuring six inches long.
"We scooped some of them out of the water, about 20 of them, and brought them to Masara and allowed them to grow
in a man-made pool at the minesite. A year later, they have grown in size and much to our regret, a company executive who
visited the minesite saw these reptiles and brought them to Manila, Ortega recalls.
In Ortega's narratives, the lake was named after Leonard Kniaseff who obviously put the lake in the country's map, although
the writer considered Kniaseff as the one who discovered the lake during the pre-war period. In the list of lakes in Mindanao
in the 1940 Census Atlas of the Philippines, Lake Leonard was not yet mentioned. However, the Lake Leonard was already plotted
in the US Army Map, Series 711, compiled in 1956, from 1947-1953 photographs in the Bureau of Construction and Geodetic Survey,
Dept. of Public Highways and Others.
Kniazeff was prospecting for minerals in the mid thirties within the radius of 15 kilometers from his homebase in the
pre-war Davao Gold Mines based in Hijo when he discovered the existence of the lake, writes Ortega. After the war, Samico
opened its Masara Mines, and Kniazeff became its first general superintendent. In 1952 he died and Alfred G. Vellguth, Samico
director and operations staff of the pre-war Davao gold Mine renamed the lake into what is known
now as Lake Leonard as a fitting tribute to the courageous and intrepid mining prospector.
A REVERED MANSAKA WATERBODY
But the Mansakas considered the lake they called as Danaw as a revered waterbody of their forebears, a part of the Mansaka
ancestral land, says 68-year old Mansaka chieftain Fidel Barillo, also a former barangay captain of Panoraon, another adjacent
village, 1 km of New Leyte.
In an interview, he said the at times Mansakas call the lake as Lino, referring to a pool of trapped water. He said that
a story carried from generation to generation of Mansaka people who lived in scattered hinterlands neighboring the lake told
about the lake not yet habitated by crocodiles. At some time the lake later became byabaroy, Mansaka term for feared due to
the crocodiles that sooner thrived after some Mansaka brethren went to the lake and made irreverent acts such as creating
noise or laughing that disturbed that spirits in the lake, Barillo shares a Mansaka lake story.
He recalled that during his teenage days he went for in his father's forays at the lake's vicinity, considered as a good
hunting ground. In a distance atop a hill, he saw a so serene lake amidst the surrounding thick foliages where they got wild
animals and wild fruits. For its crocodiles, the Mansakas except the known tribal hunter named Habana from Tagbarus village
had some fear into going near to the lake,he said.
In the late 60s, late Habana had been known in the New
Leyte-Masara-Panoraon-Tagbarus hinterlands here for his exploits as a fearless crocodile hunter in the lake. Accordingly,
Habana would always went out of the lake carrying his catch of crocodiles in varying sizes which he would sell at the lowlands,
Barillo recalls.
A VEGETABLE BOWL
The lake was also known as Vegetable Bowl of Davao del Norte just like Trinidad Valley in Baguio up north. Ortega described
that the lake once sit on a fertile hidden valley and an excellent fishing ground where freshwater fish of different species
thrived.
Cenon Cadion, 66, first among the pioneer lake settlers, said he first saw the lake in 1964 while prospecting in the forests
for good land to cultivate from Masara. That time he thought that with a fertile plain land beside a beautiful lake where
fishes could be raised, humans could survive in there. He said the lake then was indeed attractive of its clear water with
untouched moss, hot and cold springs and the orchids in the forest that surrounded it.
Attracted by the habitable environment of the lake, he with few others soon cultivated a track of land in the lakeside
plain. Migrants came flocking in to stake land claims starting in the late 60s after news spread that a good land could be
found by the lake until a settlement was formed. Because most of migrants to the lake were from Leyte, the community then
called the plain as the New Leyte. In the late 1970s New Leyte became a separate barangay from Masara
with over 100 houses and a population of 500, Cadion recalls.
Alejandro Mendoza, also a pioneer settler to the lake, said that the land was so conducive to farming that he made good
cash then especially from vegetables good for classy cuisine like cabbages, potatoes and the like. Vegetable farmers and traders
would transport vegetables on foot crossing for several times the stream of Masara river to Masara, where they were hauled
on to trucks and sold to
Tagum and Davao City, he said.
Pioneer settlers recalled that then were food-sufficient in the original site as they had vegetables, corn, banana and
cash crops like coffee, durian and coconut trees along with the lake's abundant freshwater fishes that multiplied after they
started seeding the lake with fingerlings. They were awed that every crop they planted just grew abundantly in the old site
sans the use of fertilizers and spray chemicals.
The settlers also recalled that they practiced regulated fishing then especially during the time of their first barangay
captain Sotero Neri, Sr. who had once told them that the lake area was bound to be a sought-after tourist spot in the future.
Neri later died of heart attack during the thick of the negotiations with NDMC management relating their relocation.
Now Mendoza along with the others have regretted for selling rights of the good land to NDMC to be relocated at the present
barangay site in an upper mountain overlooking the lake, some 500 meters from the original site. "We could have been
rich by now had we not sold our rights and continued farming in the fertile soil of the lake area," says Mendoza.
Florentino Yunson, now 61, who tilled four hectares at the old site, recalls that then the villagers could survive without
going to the lowlands to buy basic foodstuffs unlike at present as they were then blessed with abundant fish that grew so
big in a year's time, cereals and rootcrops. Like Mendoza, he has expressed regrets in opting for the cash which he said was
just lost in a short time.
THE RELOCATION OF THE BARANGAY
The lakeside New Leyte then known as a thriving agricultural community before NDMC arrived. Accordingly, the company entered
into an agreement with Elizalde & Co. to develop, exploit and operate the latter's Amacan Mine. NDMC then entered as
one of the corporate copper-to-gold
mining companies in the erstwhile undivided Davao del Norte during the heyday start of corporate mining in early 1970s,
along with the Apex Mining which operated the Masara Mines of Elizalde- subsidiary
Samico and the Sabena Mining Corporation in Barangay Camanlangan, New Bataan in the present Compostela Valley Province,
which was carved out from Davao del Norte in 1998.
Wilfredo Guimbaolibot, a Masara resident, recalled that the negotiation of the NDMC to the relocation of the New Leyte
residents took about three years starting in the late 70s. Negotiation came simultaneous with the preparatory mining works
done by DMCI and CICJ firms,contractors of NDMC.
He said that the New Leyte community first resisted to relocation of NDMC as the settlers were already gaining then from
abundant agricultural produce. But the oppositors from the community including his so idealistic older brother Godofredo Paking,
former caretaker barangay captain of New Leyte who later joined the New People's Army after being hounded by the military,
were later outnumbered by those who accepted with the monetary offers of NDMC.
"It was martial law then and with the powerful Marcos and Elizalde, they could not do otherwise," recalls the
younger Guimbaolibot, an employee of a Korean company which is presently buying metal chattels of NDMC for melting, even as
he said that the NDMC had well compensated the affected residents. (Ed- The older Guimbalot was killed on Aug. 2, 1999 along
with three others in what was known as the Mawab Four massacre).
Another pioneer settler Lucy Sayson said that NDMC had given to the 80 affected villagers a total compensation only for
damages to their crops and plants amounting to some P8 million, of which she was allocated P84,000, beside the P2 million
that reportedly went to the barangay. She said that the affected settlers got varying compensation depending on the type and
growth status of their crops and plants. At that time many settlers were producing vegetables intercropped with the growing
coffee and coconut trees. The plain was also emerging a coffee plantation belt.
Further under the scheme, her share was already deducted of 10 percent for the payment of their relocation lots. But until
now when NDMC has long gone in their area Sayson complains that the relocation lots of the residents remain unreleased and
untitled yet to them.
Manuel Vergara, Community Environment and Natural Resources officer incharge for Comval coastal towns, bared in separate
interview that the vast areas covering the whole New Leyte and its adjacent barangays and the hinterlands of Mabini town are
still under NDMC's mining claim under MPSA Application No. (XI) F-14 filed on Jan. 8, 1996.
He said that the New Leyte could no longer be released as alienable and disposable area as the national land policy of
maintaining a 40 percent for release to private entities and 60 percent under government administration has long been breached.
He however said that New Leyte residents could still avail of special tenurial arrangements under DENR programs like stewardship
and forest management agreements with definite period of time, schemes that do not jibe with the quest for security of land
tenure of the residents. The relocated New Leyte covering a land area of 32 square kilometers has now a population of 2,500.
THE DEAD LAKE
According to geologists, Lake Leonard was a dead volcano scaling up about a maximum altitude of about 5,000 feet above
sea level a million of years ago. This is suggested by what formed like a collapsed caldera in the lake's bowl-shaped topography
and presence of faults and fissures acting as passageways of the hot springs located at its periphery. Once the Philippine
National Oil explored
and drilled in the area for possible geothermal energy.
In 1980, NDMC started the construction of its tailings pond (the Lake itself) and dam. Lake Leonard became the source
of water supply for NDMC's huge copper milling and processing plant. At the same time, the Lake was utilized as its "giant
ashtray", where milling wastes or tails were dumped. This sealed the death sentence of Lake Leonard," narrates Ortega.
He added that because of the daily spoiling its crystal-clear waters have turned ash-gray because of mud, slime and filth
that were dumped into it. A wide portion of the lake has solidified because of the dumping of thousands of tons of daily milling
wastes containing poisonous chemicals and reagents. Lake Leonard is now a dead lake. And Ortega cries to high heavens: "Nothing
is left except for the barren soil, denuded and bald mountains, landslides and flashfloods that are mute witnesses of a bygone
era. The flora and fauna are gone forever. So are the technical experts who killed the Lake.
They have gone to seek employment elsewhere- leaving the people who reside in the lake area to suffer and fend for themselves
because of the utter destruction that they have brought to bear on the environment and the ecology."
THE AMACAN FLASHFLOOD
Following the relocation of the community at its present site, NDMC figured in a flashflood disaster in October 10, 1980
when a big pool of water trapped by the construction debris at the upper portion of Amacan river following weeks of continuous
rains gave way rampaging down contractors' bunkhouses and electrical lines in lower ground along the river channel, which
resulted to over 200 casualties many of whom were electrocuted, Guimbalot said.
Already relocated when the flashflood struck, settlers called the flashflood as Buhawi. Fortunately, Lake Leonard, about
6 kms from the NDMC's plant, is not traversed by Amacan river channel.
After the preparatory works and the dam construction, NDMC started operating in 1982 directly using the lake as its tailings
pond.
The disaster consequently led to the fear of downstream Masaraline communities of Panoraon, Masara, Elizalde, Panibasan,
Kinuban of Maco, Andili and Nuevo Iloco of Mawab, where the Masara river traverses, over a possible similar fate on the mine
tailings dumped in Lake Leonard.
Barangay folk here said then that because of the NDMC's mine tailings dumped daily might soon became too heavy that break
the dam the company had constructed to entrap the tailings. They said that before when the lake was still small, they were
just convenient even during heavy rains knowing of the lake would just continuously discharge enough rainwater from unmined
mountains.
Residents in downstream communities only heaped a sigh a relief when NDMC stopped its operations in 1992. Some New Leyte
villagers are even gratified that NDMC's dam had caused for the widening of the lake's area and that the
solidification of the tailings would mean that the dam would have only to contend with the weight of its water.
But other residents though have still lingering fears on the dam.
Like Cadion, the lead-petitioners of the lake area, the only one remaining in the community who refused NDMC's offer for
sentimental reason, but whose farm was anyway buried by the coming of mine tailings, says: "The dam is thought to be
for good purpose. But not all wants industries. It seems like the dam is safe until something happens."
Meantime, the NDMC compound at Amacan area, 5 kms from Lake Leonard sits idly in eerie silence as its 300 staff houses
are empty except the few used by a handful security guards. The compound used to be brisk with the over 1,000 mining workers
working then during NDMC's operations which stopped in 1992.
At the backdrop of rather dead scene of NMDC compound, Lake Leonard can be seen in a low plain showing persistent signs
of coming back to life.
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