Water district asserts right to ‘Buro Buro’ water source

Thursday, January 26, 2012

BACOLOD City Water District (Baciwa) General Manager lawyer Julie Ann Carbon said the water district has the legal right to use the water source in Buro Buro Springs located in Talisay City.

The springs are located at Lot 1017, the ownership of which is being contested by four claimants.

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Carbon said the claimants are Erle Saosao Vadlit Gonzales, Edmundo Sauci, Federico Lazarte and another person.

Gonzalez and Lazarte are claiming P207 million each from Baciwa as payment for the property.

Lot 1017 is subject of an expropriation case. In 2007, the court gave Baciwa a Writ of Possession. From 2007 until the present, Baciwa has the right to use the property at the exclusion of others, according to Carbon.

She added that Baciwa has been using the Buro Buro Springs since 1956.

“Gonzales is claiming that we are using Balogo springs. When we saw his water permit, it has different coordinates from the spring that Baciwa is currently using. He claimed that he was there in 2007 and he had structures built there. How can he build structures there, as Baciwa possesses the property? We looked into his documents and he had pictures of the structures. But it was familiar to us because the structures were owned by Baciwa. We don’t know why he claimed ownership of that property and structures,” said Carbon.

The matter is now with the court and it is up to the court to determine who the real owner is and how much compensation is due to the owner, Carbon said.

“We are talking about water here. Baciwa has the water rights permit. Since water belongs to the state, nobody owns it except the state. Since we have the water permit, we have the right to extract water from the source,” she stressed.

“We have the right to use and protect the water source. They should respect that Writ of Possession issued by the court and not do anything in the property because Baciwa has the legal right to it,” she said.