DOE wants tree-planting under transmission lines ‘criminalized’

The Department of Energy (DOE) has been batting for criminal liability being meted against individuals and entities intentionally planting trees underneath or within the areas traversed by transmission facilities.

Nevertheless, this is a policy that has not been pushed into law by the Aquino regime, hence it will lodge to the attention of the incoming administration.

Energy Secretary Zenaida Y. Monsada said this will be among the policy recommendations they will refer to the incoming leadership at the department.

She noted that the DOE is “lobbying for the passage of a binding law to prohibit any activities comprising the integrity of the grid regarding the obstructions beneath the transmission facilities,” such as vegetation and setting up of structures.

“This will form part of the recommendations of the DOE… to criminalize intentional tree-planting activities underneath these transmission assets,” she stressed.

The plan will be to lodge a bill for discussion and eventual action of the 17th Congress. The energy department will take the lead in collaboration with transmission firm-concessionaire National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

Just last week, NGCP reported another case of right-of-way obstruction at its 69-kilovolt Sta Rita-Quinapondan transmission line project in Samar. The company noted that work stopped due to “uncooperative landowners.”

As designed, the project has been intended to “improve power reliability and quality in Western and Eastern Samar.”

NGCP indicated that it “complied with all the requirements of the court, so that we can lawfully proceed with the project.”

But it claimed that there had been “open defiance of the writ of possession” by the landowners, hence, frustrating “our efforts to provide better transmission services to the people of Samar.”

ROW hurdles have been a recurrent dilemma for NGCP, hence, it wants more stringent measures to prevent such activities from affecting its operations.