Buhisan Dam is a dam located in Buhisan,

Cebu City Cebu City, officially the City of Cebu, is a Cities of the Philippines#Legal classification, highly urbanized city in the Central Visayas region of the Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 964,169 people, making ...

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

. It is one of the main source of water for Cebu City and

Metro Cebu Metropolitan Cebu, or simply Metro Cebu (; ), is the main urban center of the province of Cebu in the Philippines. Metro Cebu is located along the central eastern portion of the island including the nearby island of Mactan. It accounts for 19. ...

. Part of

Central Cebu Protected Landscape The Central Cebu Protected Landscape (CCPL) is a protected area located in the mountains and drainage basins of central Cebu in the Philippines. The CCPL covers what used to be known as the Central Cebu National Park, Buhisan Dam, Mananga Wate ...

, Buhisan Dam is situated in the mountains of Barangay Buhisan behind Labangon, Cebu. Built in 1911-1912 and maintained by the Metro Cebu Water District, it is being developed into an eco-tourism location. It supplies five percent of Metropolitan Cebu Water District's (MCWD) current water capacity.

History

Because of the lack of potable water in Cebu, a

cholera outbreak Seven cholera pandemics have occurred in the past 200 years, with the first pandemic originating in India in 1817. The seventh cholera pandemic is officially a current pandemic and has been ongoing since 1961, according to a World Health Organiz ...

began to spread in the early 1900s which killed 559 people, or about 1% of the population of the city, which then had a population of 55,000. A destructive fire in 1906 which destroyed millions worth of properties also proved the need of enough water supply for Cebu. Buhisan Dam was built to address devastating fires that could again hit the city, and the need for a safe water supply during a cholera outbreak. The dam was first proposed by the Speaker of the

Philippine Assembly The Philippine Assembly (sometimes called the Philippine National Assembly) was the lower house of the Philippine Legislature from 1907 to 1916, when it was renamed the House of Representatives of the Philippines. The Philippine Assembly ...

Sergio Osmeña Sr. Sergio may refer to: * Sergio (name), for people with the given name Sergio * Sergio (carbonado), the largest rough diamond ever found * Sergio, the mascot for the Old Orchard Beach Surge baseball team * ''Sergio'', a 2009 documentary film about ...

Osmeña then worked hard to obtain support from the

Insular Government The Philippine Insular GovernmentThis form of the name appeared in the titles of US Supreme Court cases, but was otherwise rarely used. See Costas v. Government of the Philippine Islands, 221 U.S. 623, 1911. The Administrative Code of the Phil ...

for various infrastructure projects in Cebu, and one of these was the Buhisan Dam. The American Governor-General

William Cameron Forbes William Cameron Forbes (May 21, 1870 – December 24, 1959) was an American investment banker and diplomat. He served as governor-general of the Philippines from 1909 to 1913 and ambassador of the United States to Japan from 1930 to 1932. Ear ...

supported Osmeña's proposed project, and helped secure the P550,000 funds for the construction and completion of the Dam. Forbes issued an executive order designating 5,590,000 square meters of land in Labangon for the proposed watershed and reservoir. As early as 1909, American engineer Eusebius Julius Halsema mapped the contours of the entire watershed. The young Halsema (for whom the

Halsema Highway The Halsema Highway (also known as the Benguet–Mountain Province Road, the Baguio–Bontoc Road, and the Mountain Trail) is a national secondary highway in the Philippines. Situated within the Cordillera Central range in northern Luzon, it st ...

was named) was appointed by the Bureau of Public Works to supervise the Cebu waterworks. Marcelo Veloso Regner, an engineer from Cebu, was Halsema's assistant. The dam was then named Osmeña Waterworks. In order to celebrate this breakthrough, a water fountain was then built, which would now be known as the Fuente Osmeña Circle, which was also named after the speaker who proposed the waterworks. In 2011, Buhisan Dam celebrated its centennial. In August 2013, there was concern about silting at the dam, which was at risk of overflowing. One source reported that silting had reduced the dam's water capacity from 10,000 cubic meters per day to 6,000 cubic meters per day. After flooding in 2013, safety concerns were raised regarding the dam. MCWD officials state that the dam is stable, but needs to be desilted so it can hold more water. A primitive warning bell, essentially consisting of "an oxygen tank and a steel rod to hit it with" is being used to alert residents of the barangay of Buhisan to evacuate in the event that rising water levels reach the top of the dam. The endangered "Cebu small worm

skink Skinks are a type of lizard belonging to the family (biology), family Scincidae, a family in the Taxonomic rank, infraorder Scincomorpha. With more than 1,500 described species across 100 different taxonomic genera, the family Scincidae is one o ...

" (Brachymeles cebuensis) may live near the dam.

References

External links

*{{Cite web , title = Barangay Buhisan - Official Web Site , accessdate = March 26, 2014 , url = http://www.barangay.net.ph/buhisan/landmark.htm , archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120330231828/http://www.barangay.net.ph/buhisan/landmark.htm , archive-date = March 30, 2012 , url-status = dead Buildings and structures in Cebu City Dams in the Philippines Dams completed in 1912 1912 establishments in the Philippines

History

See also

References

External links