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By Euan Paulo C. Añonuevo, Reporter
MANILA Electric Co. (Meralco)
said its customers are unlikely to suffer brownouts during the
Christmas break as a local court deferred to next year
implementation of a decision to dismantle a transmission line
located in a posh Makati subdivision.
Jose Ronald Valles, Meralco legal
counsel, said the Regional Trial Court of Makati has deferred the
decision to deenergize the 230-kilovolt Sucat-Araneta-Balintawak
transmission line in Dasmariñas Village by January 31.
He said the lower court decided
to give time to hear the pleadings of parties including Meralco and
National Transmission Corp. (TransCo), both of which are contesting
the shutdown of the facility.
“The last order of the RTC
judge said that they’re giving us so many days to file a comment.
Our period to reply will expire in December 25. Unfortunately since
this is Christmas day—a holiday—the period is extended up to the
next working day, which is January 2,” the lawyer said.
Valles said the utility has until
this date to file its reply, after which the motion to intervene
before the lower court would be heard and put up for a decision.
The legal tussle engulfing the
Sucat-Araneta-Balintawak transmission line has pitted the power
sector against the residents of Dasmariñas Village, an upscale
neighborhood in the country’s financial district. The village
residents claimed that overhead high tension cables generate an
electromagnetic radiation field that causes health risks.
Dasmariñas Village residents
sued TransCo’s predecessor, National Power Corp. (Napocor) in
2000, after which Presiding Judge Eugene Paras of the Makati RTC
Branch 58 issued an injunction stopping the use of a portion of the
transmission line near the said subdivision.
The Supreme Court subsequently
upheld the lower court order, paving the way for the RTC’s
issuance of a writ of execution on October 13, 2008, which has since
been deferred.
The government and power-sector
players earlier warned of rotating brownouts similar to that which
hit the country over a decade ago should the
Sucat-Araneta-Balintawak transmission line be deenergized.
Customers of Meralco, the
country’s largest distribution utility, would have to bear the
brunt of higher electricity rates as they would have to shell out
for any investment in alternative transmission facilities to be put
up in its place. Furthermore, the decommissioning of the line would
constrain the supply of electricity from cheap-running power plants
located in the south of the grid.
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