Construction of the 8-MW Cabulig Hydroelectric Power Plant located at Plaridel, Claveria, Misamis Oriental is now underway. In fact, based on the pictures taken during the 19th MinBizCon showed the project achieving significant progress. According to the presentor, construction began in January this year and is targeted to be completed in 2011.
The project is intended to supply the power requirements of CEPALCO, Cagayan de Oro’s distribution utility.
The success of the Night Cafe is Cagayan de Oro is phenomenal. Night Cafe program was one of the bright points of CDO Mayor Vicente Emano. He was the architect of this project way back in 2002. Its been a success ever since though the project is not without its critics. A more objective view is that the the Night Cafe has made a signature of Cagayan de Oro.
Now other cities are trying to replicate the Night Cafe. Many tried, but may failed. The big problem is peace and order. With such a huge crowd who are drinking beer and liquor, it is a police nightmare because drunks can go wild and spark trouble to others. Not a few incident where the attempted copying of Night Cafe resulted to ramble and stabbing among the patrons and even by standers.
Now why is that? The answer is that an activity like Night Cafe ONLY CLICKS in a place like Cagayan de Oro. The question, is there a place which is like Cagayan de Oro? None.
One has to be a City of Golden Friendship before it can launch a project like Night Cafe. The success of the Night Cafe is partly due to its people. Cagayan de Oro is gifted with warm people who think that they belong to one community. Cagayanons natural congeniality makes the Night Cafe as safer place to be in. People can control themselves because their minds are predispose to trouble unless there is an intentional provocation. People who are not predispose to finding trouble fun in their minds instead of seeking fights at the slightest causes.
This strong sense of community rubbed on visitors. “When you are in Cagayan de Oro, think and act like a Cagayanon.” As if they are transported in another plane where people seems to know each other for a long time.
Before anyone would try to copy Night Cafe, but failed, this could be the answer why it failed.
‘Ccoal plants, while posing a long-term threat to the environment,
are necessary to develop Mindanao’s full economic potential.’
IT was the take-charge thing to do, President Aquino directing the energy department to come up with a "road map" toward adequate power supply for Mindanao when he visited the region last week. It turned out, however, that businessmen already have a good understanding of what ails the power business in the region. More important, investors have started to put money into new generating plants. It’s the half-hearted government support for the undertakings that has stymied efforts to put an end to island-wide rotating brownouts.
Ralph Paguio, chair of the Cagayan de Oro City Chamber of Commerce, said the need is to put up additional generating capacity to wean Mindanao from its heavy dependence on hydroelectric plants. Hydro power is cheap but unreliable because of climate and environmental changes that affect the rainfall pattern and the carrying capacity of Lanao Lake.
"We would prefer that we have the right generation mix – hydro, fossil fuel, geothermal and other renewables – for our power mix," he added.
Aquino apparently got the message. But only half of it sank in. In his instruction to energy officials, he said the focus should be on renewables such as wind farms in Camiguin and Davao del Sur, solar panels in isolated communities and mini- and micro-hydroelectric plants where there is adequate water run off.
These "sexy" and "appropriate" technologies, however, are as subject to the vagaries of nature as the Agus and Polangui hydro plants are. These could not assure a stable supply yearend.
It is here where base plants – big generators that run 24/7 – come in. Unfortunately, the most efficient base plants using current technology are fueled by coal.
The Aboitiz group is planning to put up a 150- megawatt coal-fired plant to supply its distribution franchise in Davao City, the region’s economic center. It is understood that the only thing that holds back Aboitiz from pursuing the project is the worry that it might run into problems with extremist environmental activists.
The Aboitiz Group does not want to go the way of the Alcantara Group whose much-delayed 200 MW coal-fired plant in Sarangani is being opposed by a Church-led hodge-podge of environmentalists.
San Miguel Corp., which is in the midst of an ambitious diversification from its food and beverage business, has bought a number of coal mines in Mindanao. The mines are capable of supplying the fuel needs of new plants with a combined capacity of up to 1,200 MW that San Miguel is seriously thinking of putting up.
These three projects alone can assure adequate power supply of Mindanao for the next decade. What is needed is a declaration from the government that, yes, coal plants, while posing a long-term threat to the environment, are necessary to develop Mindanao’s full economic potential.
