NATURE LINE This photo taken on Tuesday shows a section of Buyog Watershed in Baguio City, where forest patches lie in between residential areas and where a conditional road project has been approved by the city council. —VINCENT CABREZA
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — The city council on Monday night granted conditional approval to a controversial road project that will cut through a critical watershed, but only after imposing a series of safeguards and requiring barangay officials to assume responsibility for any future encroachment into the protected forest area.
The P23.9-million, 218-meter bypass road will link Barangays Pinget and West Quirino Hill and is intended to improve access for emergency response vehicles serving communities within the 19-hectare Buyog Watershed.
The project has been championed by eight barangays—Pinget, Dizon-Manzanillo, West Quirino Hill, East Quirino Hill, Middle Quirino Hill, Lower Quirino Hill, Camdas, and Happy Homes-Old Lucban—which have long complained about the difficulty of deploying fire trucks and ambulances to their communities. Local officials said the area has relied primarily on a single access route, Quirino Road.
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