STATE-RUN Bases Conversion and Development Authority plans to rehabilitate a pre-war mini-hydro electric plant inside Camp John Hay in Baguio City, a high-ranking BCDA official said Monday.
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“We are currently doing the rehabilitation studies for the project,” BCDA president and chief executive Arnel Paciano Casanova told Manila Standard in an interview.
“The BCDA will be partnering with the John Hay Management Corp. in this undertaking,” he said.
Jamie Agbayani, president and chief executive of John Hay Management Corp., said the project would be more of a rebuilding than rehabilitation, citing the need to construct a new hydro plant after the old one was destroyed by a powerful earthquake 21 years ago.
“The rebuilding will be a two-year project from 2012 until 2013. We are eyeing a hydro plant that could generate 3.8 megawatts to 4 megawatts, bigger than the original hydro plant built during the American period that was good for only 560 kilowatts,” Agbayani told the Standard.
She said BCDA would take the lead to rebuild the project.
Casanova said the power generated from the new hydro plant could supply the eletricity requirements of the John Hay Special Economic Zone, Baguio City, Benguet province and the northern Luzon grid.
The US government built the power plant at Camp 6 along Kennon Road after developing Camp John Hay in 1903. The Camp 6 power plant served as Camp John Hay’s exclusive source of electricity.
Other pre-war buildings of Camp John Hay built at that time were a dormitory (later called Main Club), hospital (later called the Igorot Lodge), warehouse and headquarters.
The hydro plant ceased operations after it was destroyed by an earthquake in July 1990.
Meanwhile, Casanova said Rocky Mountain Arabica Coffee Co., a Canadian company with whom BCDA recently signed an agro-forestry management agreement, would start planting coffee next year, which could turn the John Hay Special Economic Zone into a world-class coffee producer in the future. - (Manila Standard Today / by Julito G. Rada)
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