Ledesma: Water and Coal

Sunstar Davao
By Jun Ledesma
Sunbursts
Thursday, September 15, 2011


THERE seems to be a stalemate in the City Council's decision process of whether or not it will proceed with the reclassification of the Binugao, Toril from protected light industrial to protected heavy industrial zone. This crucial decision will trigger the start of the establishment of a coal-fired power plant in a 25-hectare coastal area in the barangay. This is actually step two in the process since the council has already unanimously endorsed the Aboitiz Power proposal to set-up the plant to avert power shortage comes 2013 or 2014. I say 2013 because at the rate Davao City is growing, we might be literally in the dark sooner than expected.


The City Council had hedged after giving AP the green light when no less than Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte noticed that the power plant will need a "big" volume of underground water. We cannot take it against the vice mayor if he needs to be better informed about the impact of the water issue since we are talking here of water. On the other hand, there is a need to be circumspect in the appreciation of this issue because the fact here is that a huge volume of sea water will be used in the condensation process and clean fresh water will be used separately for steam that will turn the turbines to generate electricity.


Where to source a huge volume of seawater is no brainer. Where the fresh water will come from is what bothers everyone. From the diagram of the coal-fired power plant system shown by AP, the close steam cycle loop will not result to depletion of fresh water since, through the condensation process; the steam will just go back to its liquid state. That's how my science teacher taught me eons ago and that's what my boy is still being taught in Ateneo.


Oh well, maybe there is more to what my vicarious knowledge tells me. To end the impasse, there are a number of things the city council can do. Direct AP to source out their fresh water need from a nearby river since water from that source will just be washed out to the sea anyway. Since the area of the proposed project is about 25 hectares, maybe AP can set up rainwater collection ponds like what some kibbutz farms in Israel are doing. Or a combination of ground water, surface and ambient water combined. If the city councilors are still not comfortable with these, why not consult an institution that is more authoritative than us opinion writers, anesthesiologists, Davao City Water District, environment militants and pan-handling NGOs? Want a science-based advice? A reader of this columnist from Cebu found my cell number and texted me that the University of San Carlos in Cebu City has a well-equipped Water Resource Center that can give a credible study. He said the center has hydrologists who had specialized in scientific study about water distribution, properties and how it circulates on earth, etcetera, etcetera. Many of them took specialized studies on hydrology from Germany and the United States.


A third party who specialized on water resource will be less controversial. By the way, a little bird also whispered to me that the new Vice President for Academics of Ateneo de Davao University who is concurrently the Dean of Science and Arts is one who took special studies on environment. He can be an excellent resource person. The only problem here is that some Ateneo students were drafted by no-to-coal activists to join their crusade and have been conducting teach-ins in Binugao. But then that's par for the course. A scientist is his/her own activist.


But the pragmatic in me yells in revulsion why we trivialize the issue of water when copious amount of water from our rivers is washed out to the sea, catchments can be made for ours is said to be a fourth type of weather which means we have rains all-year-round and… yes underground water that leaks out in the crags of the highest peak of Samal Island.


Haven't you heard of happy compromises and regulations? As former Department of Energy Undersecretary, Engineer Zamzamin Ampatuan, puts it, when there is no power it means dark days ahead for the new graduates and the next generation. He said poverty and power blackout are inseparable twins.


Mayor Inday Sara Duterte posed the question. What will be the best alternative to coal? You want it clean, then it should be nuclear. But that prospect is lost in the horizon when Fukushima and now, most recently, in France, the nuclear power plants went up in fiery smoke. Solar power, maybe, but where do we get an area of at least 3,000 hectares to build the panels and money to pay for our electric bills five time more expensive that what we pay these days? Mayor Inday grapples with the contradictions but being a leader of a dynamic city with a growing populations and industries, she comes up with the choice that the clean coal-fired power plant remains to be the most viable.


For comments: scledesmajr@yahoo.com