CABANATUAN CITY – A cadastral survey conducted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources
(DENR) in Region 2 indicated that 7,000 hectares of land in Pantabangan town belong to a Nueva Vizcaya town.
Based on that survey, the DENR-2 wants the pinpointed tract of land to be annexed to the town of Alfonso Castaneda in Nueva Vizcaya.
But Nueva Ecija officials are opposing it and have started a legislative inquiry. Pantabangan, a mountainous
town about 59 kilometers northeast of here, is the host of Pantabangan Dam and the Casecnan Multipurpose
Irrigation and Power Project (CMIPP). It gets big revenue from the real property tax (RPT) being paid by the Casecnan Energy Corp. which built and operates the CMIPP for irrigation and hydro-electric power.
The province also gets a big share in the RPT being paid by CalEnergy. “We are calling for a legislative inquiry,” Joseph Ortiz, a member of the provincial board of Nueva Ecija, said. The town is within the first district of Nueva Ecija which Ortiz represents in the provincial board.
He said the legislative inquiry was requested by Gov. Aurelio Umali for the board to enact through a resolution the claim which, when perfected, will mean “a loss of 7,000 hectares of land in particular to Pantabangan town and to Nueva Ecija in general”.
The claim, based on documents provided by Ortiz, indicated that sometime in 2012 the DENR-2 based in Tuguegarao City conducted a cadastral survey, through a private surveying office it contracted, of the “political boundary, land use map, and data (gathering) of all parcels of land within the municipality of Alfonso Castaneda, Nueva Vizcaya”.
In its contract with the surveying firm, the DENR-2, represented by its Regional Executive Director Benjamin Tumaliuan, stipulated that “the conduct of the survey shall be in accordance with the manual for Land Use Surveys of the Philippines in effect project and other pertinent DENR rules and regulation.”
Alfonso Castaneda town is the last town of Nueva Vizcaya in the northeast bounded by Pantabangan and the town of Maria Aurora in Aurora province. Its history indicated that in 1930, five families from Batac, Ilocos Norte settled in the Ilongot- inhabited place of Lublub, then a sitio of Barangay Marikit in Pantabangan town.
In 1950, Lublub became an independent barangay of Pantabangan but later on became a part of Dupax del Sur in Nueva Vizcaya. Lublub became a town in 1979 by virtue of a Batas Pambansa and was renamed after the first governor of Nueva Vizcaya.
With only six barangays and a population of 7,428 (2010 census), the town, based on its receipts and expenditure in 2012, had a total revenue of P105.5 million mostly from its share of the internal revenue allotment and RPT from CalEnergy.
Three of these barangays host CalEnergy’s facilities in conveying water to Pantabangan Dam’s reservoir.
The DENR claim based on the survey came to the knowledge of Nueva Ecija officials through a resolution of the sangguniang bayan of Pantabangan requesting the governor and sangguniang panlalawigan “to investigate and institute an appropriate action against the individuals responsible for these irregular activities (the cadastral
survey and the claim for the 7,000 ha. land in Pantabangan).”
The resolution, passed last August 30, indicated in its preliminary statements that the results of the cadastral
survey were approved by the DENR in March 2012. It added that what the department did “was contrary to law as
Pantabangan (officials) were not notified about the survey, it was done unilaterally and that no representative from DENR Region 3 was present during the survey”.
