Laiban Dam

Also known as: Manila Water Supply III Project — the 1979 conception under which the MWSS studies began ([Wikipedia — Laiban Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laiban_Dam "Laiban Dam — Wikipedia (article: Proposed dams in the Kaliwa River watershed)")) · Laiban Dam Project — the styling of the 2009–2010 San Miguel–MWSS joint-venture proposals ([Inquirer — July 2013](https://web.archive.org/web/2012/http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/443527/sierra-madre-tribe-asks-congress-to-stop-laiban-dam "Philippine Daily Inquirer (Delfin T. Mallari Jr., July 12, 2013; archived) — Sierra Madre tribe asks Congress to stop Laiban Dam")) · The Tanay dam — the site designation distinguishing it from the downstream Kaliwa site ([Inquirer — February 2013](https://web.archive.org/web/2019/https://business.inquirer.net/109277/p85b-mwss-project-same-river-in-tanay-but-different-plan "Philippine Daily Inquirer (Niña P. Calleja, February 25, 2013; archived) — P85-B MWSS project: same river in Tanay, but different plan")) · Phase 2 of the New Centennial Water Source — the larger second dam contemplated in 2012 behind the Kaliwa low dam ([Wikipedia — Laiban Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laiban_Dam "Laiban Dam — Wikipedia (article: Proposed dams in the Kaliwa River watershed)"))

Places

Definition

The Laiban Dam is a large water-supply dam proposed since 1979 at Barangay Laiban, Tanay, Rizal, on the upper Kaliwa River watershed in the southeastern Sierra Madre — the older and larger of the two dam sites the government has studied on that river, and the one that has never been built. Conceived in November 1979 under Ferdinand Marcos as the Manila Water Supply III Project, when the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) identified the Kaliwa basin as the most viable alternative raw-water source for the metropolis and began the first World Bank feasibility study, the project has been halted, revived, and shelved repeatedly across six administrations without a stone being laid. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Mongabay) Its full submergence footprint, as recounted in the environmental record, would have exceeded 28,000 hectares and displaced some 11,000 families — against which the project finally pursued in the same watershed, this wiki’s entry on the Kaliwa Dam Project, carries a 113-hectare reservoir. (Mongabay)

The Laiban and Kaliwa names mark the same river’s two sites, and that distinction organizes this entry: the upstream Laiban site at Tanay — the “Laiban Dam” of the 1979–2013 proposals — was ultimately disapproved because a dam at Tanay would submerge a larger area, and the program’s dam moved to the downstream Quezon site at General Nakar and Infanta, which since 2012 is what “Kaliwa Dam” names; Tanay and neighboring Teresa were left to host the upstream reservoir works and conveyance tunnels. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Wikipedia — Kaliwa Dam) Laiban thus stands as the Philippine water sector’s great unbuilt dam — the project that defined Metro Manila’s search for a second source for four decades, superseded by the smaller China-financed dam now under construction. (Wikipedia — Kaliwa Dam, PCIJ)

Identities

Authority	Value
Wikipedia	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laiban_Dam
Wikidata	Q17332543
DBpedia	https://dbpedia.org/page/Laiban_Dam
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings	N/A
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Laiban+Dam%22+Kaliwa+Tanay+MWSS
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Manila Water Supply III Project — the 1979 conception under which the MWSS studies began (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam)
Laiban Dam Project — the styling of the 2009–2010 San Miguel–MWSS joint-venture proposals (Inquirer — July 2013)
The Tanay dam — the site designation distinguishing it from the downstream Kaliwa site (Inquirer — February 2013)
Phase 2 of the New Centennial Water Source — the larger second dam contemplated in 2012 behind the Kaliwa low dam (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam)

Examples and Analogies

A forty-year shadow project: Laiban is to Metro Manila’s water planning what a ghost bid is to an auction — the option against which every later proposal was priced, downsized, or justified, from the 2012 low dam to the present Kaliwa works. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam)
The big dam versus the small one: where Laiban would have drowned a sub-watershed measured in tens of thousands of hectares, the dam finally built holds a reservoir of about 113 hectares — the shrinkage being the price of getting any dam at all past the communities and the protected-forest rules. (Mongabay)
One river, two names, three presidents’ shelvings: the same Kaliwa water was studied under Marcos (1979), shelved under Aquino (1989), revived under Arroyo (2007), re-proposed as the New Centennial Water Source (2012–2013), and dammed under Duterte — the calendar being the project’s real design document. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Mongabay)
Verified project data:
Site: Barangay Laiban, Tanay, Rizal — the 180-hectare Laiban sub-watershed of the Kaliwa watershed, elevation 220–1,530 meters, southeastern Sierra Madre (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam)
1979: conceived in November 1979 as Manila Water Supply III under Marcos; MWSS began the first World Bank feasibility study that year (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam)
1981–1989: economic collapse and unrest slowed the project until Marcos’s 1986 ouster; the Corazon Aquino administration shelved it in 1989 over ballooned costs (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Mongabay)
2007–2010: Arroyo-era funding approved then shelved amid the ZTE scandal; the 2009 San Miguel Corporation unsolicited proposal — a P52-billion single large dam under Eduardo Cojuangco, reported as a P48-billion SMC–MWSS joint venture — shelved in 2010 over secrecy, water rates, and displacement (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Inquirer — February 2013, Inquirer — July 2013)
November 2009: Remontado march from General Nakar to Manila — 150 kilometers over nine days by the environmental account, 148 by the later report — after which San Miguel withdrew (Mongabay, Inquirer — July 2013)
2012–2013: New Centennial Water Source studies — a 600-MLD Kaliwa low dam with a 2,400-MLD supply tunnel, Laiban contemplated as the larger Phase 2 but never approved; February 2013’s P85-billion two-dam plan at the same site, against Metro Manila’s 97-percent dependence on Angat and a projected 1,900-MLD shortfall by 2037 (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Inquirer — February 2013)
Duterte era: low dam dropped for a full-sized dam on Chinese official development assistance; the Tanay site disapproved for submerging a larger area, the downstream Quezon site chosen (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam)
Watershed values: a 2008 floral survey recorded 121 species in 102 genera and 56 families, a fifth endemic, in a degraded mosaic of kaingin, grassland, and bamboo — one of 14 priority conservation sites of the Sierra Madre Biodiversity Corridor (Villegas & Pollisco 2008)

Usage Scenarios

1. Metro Manila Water-Security Planning

Laiban is the reference case of the metropolis’s supply problem — 97 percent dependence on Angat Dam, a projected shortfall, and a second-source search running since 1979 — the planning frame this wiki’s entries on the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System and Water Privatization in Metro Manila carry. (Inquirer — February 2013)

2. Infrastructure Project History

The dam’s on-off chronology — 1979 conception, 1989 shelving, 2007 revival, 2009 private proposal, 2010 withdrawal, 2012 downscaling, Duterte-era supersession — is a curriculum in why large Philippine infrastructure stalls: financing shocks, scandal, rate politics, and resistance. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Mongabay)

3. Indigenous Consultation and Consent

Because the site lies in Remontado Dumagat ancestral domain, Laiban’s history is the opening chapter of the consent conflict the present Kaliwa project inherited — the 2009 march the template of the opposition that followed, and the Free, Prior and Informed Consent process this wiki’s entry documents. (Mongabay, Inquirer — July 2013)

4. Environmental Assessment of Reservoir Sites

The 2008 floral survey shows what a site assessment inventories — species, endemism, vegetation mosaics, degradation — and what the choice between a large Tanay reservoir and a small Quezon one was measured against. (Villegas & Pollisco 2008, Wikipedia — Laiban Dam)

Strategies

Downsize to build: the program’s eventual strategy was to trade Laiban’s capacity for buildability — a smaller downstream reservoir, a shorter list of the displaced, and Chinese financing — the trade this wiki’s Kaliwa Dam Project entry documents from the construction side. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Wikipedia — Kaliwa Dam)
Stage the program: the 2012 design kept Laiban alive as Phase 2 behind a first-stage low dam, the incremental logic the conveyance system’s 2,400-MLD design with 1,800-MLD expansion from Laiban or Kanan embodied. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Mongabay)
Mobilize the march: the communities’ strategy — a nine-day, roughly 150-kilometer march to Manila in November 2009 — converted remote ancestral-domain grievance into national news and helped force a corporate withdrawal, the tactic repeated in the later Kaliwa fight. (Mongabay, Inquirer — July 2013)
Watch the tariff pipe: scrutiny of the 2011–2013 revival turned on reports that consumers were already paying advance tariffs toward a dam not approved — the financing question later proposals must answer first. (Inquirer — July 2013)
For researchers: keep Laiban and Kaliwa distinct in any citation — the two sites, submerged areas, and eras of financing are routinely conflated, and the record’s own naming split dates only from 2012. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam)

Security and Safety Measures

Seismic sitting of the site: the 2013 revival drew objections that the Laiban site lies between the Marikina and Real–Infanta fault lines, with a dam break feared worse than the 2004 floods — the geologic critique every later siting study has had to answer. (Inquirer — July 2013)
Submergence as the decisive test: the documented reason the Tanay site was disapproved — that its reservoir would submerge a larger area — made flood-footprint minimization the program’s governing safety criterion. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, PCIJ)
Watershed protection conditions: the Kaliwa watershed has been a protected area since 1999 within the Sierra Madre Biodiversity Corridor, and the floral record of the Laiban sub-watershed is the baseline against which such protection is measured. (Wikipedia — Kaliwa Dam, Villegas & Pollisco 2008)
For researchers: Laiban’s planning documents span four decades of MWSS studies; the accessible record is the environmental literature, the 2013 congressional record, and the journalism cited here — an official project status no longer exists, because the project no longer does. (Inquirer — July 2013, Wikipedia — Laiban Dam)

Historical Context

The Laiban story begins with a metropolis outgrowing its river. Metro Manila draws its water overwhelmingly from Angat Dam in Bulacan, and by the late 1970s the Marcos government was searching the Sierra Madre for a second source: in November 1979 the Manila Water Supply III Project was conceived, MWSS identified the Kaliwa basin as the most viable site, and the first World Bank feasibility study began — a schedule that collided with the debt crisis of the early 1980s and the unrest that followed, until the 1986 ouster and the Aquino administration’s 1989 shelving on cost grounds ended the project’s first life. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Mongabay)

The second life ran through the privatized-concession era. Studies continued under Fidel Ramos but yielded only proposals; the Arroyo administration approved funding in 2007 — Chinese financing, by the environmental account — and shelved it again amid the ZTE scandal; and in 2009 San Miguel Corporation advanced an unsolicited P52-billion Laiban proposal that died in 2010 under criticism of secrecy, water rates, and displacement, weeks after Remontado communities marched from General Nakar to Manila. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Mongabay, Inquirer — February 2013) The New Centennial Water Source studies of the Aquino III years then split the program — a 600-MLD Kaliwa low dam first, Laiban a possible Phase 2 — with February 2013’s P85-billion two-dam plan answered in July by the Agta and Remontado appeal to Congress citing 4,000 families in seven villages, the advance-tariff controversy, and the fault lines. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Inquirer — February 2013, Inquirer — July 2013) The Duterte administration ended the argument by direction: the low dam was dropped, a full-sized dam was financed on Chinese official development assistance — the $211.12-million credit the investigative record documents — and the Tanay site was disapproved because it would submerge the larger area. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, PCIJ) As of the record’s latest accounting the successor dam stands roughly a quarter built — the status this wiki’s Kaliwa Dam Project entry carries — while Laiban remains what it has been since 1989: the larger dam on paper. (PCIJ)

Challenges and Controversies

Displacement at Scale

The decisive Laiban controversy was arithmetic: a reservoir above 28,000 hectares drowning the communities of the upper Kaliwa — 11,000 families in the environmental account, 4,000 families across seven villages in the Prelature of Infanta studies cited to Congress — numbers so large they ultimately vetoed the site itself. (Mongabay, Inquirer — July 2013)

The Privatization and Rate Question

Each revival re-argued who would pay: the 2009 San Miguel proposal drew fire as a private deal that would raise water rates; the 2013 revival faced advance-tariff charges, with MWSS’s own board having ordered concessionaires in March 2011 to stop collections and escrow the funds — an order deferred a month later. (Inquirer — February 2013, Inquirer — July 2013)

Financing and Geology

The 2007 Chinese-funded revival died with a scandal not its own (ZTE); the later Chinese financing of the successor dam renewed the sovereignty-over-loans debate; and beneath both sat the geology — a site between active fault systems, the 2004 floods the standing image of what failure on that range means. (Mongabay, Inquirer — July 2013)

Which Dam Is Being Discussed

Because Laiban and Kaliwa share a river, a watershed, and a proponent, four decades of argument have been conducted with the two projects routinely confused — the record itself only fixed the naming in 2012, and public debate since has inherited the ambiguity this entry’s definition splits. (Wikipedia — Laiban Dam, Wikipedia — Kaliwa Dam)