More Kennon rock sheds set for construction
TUBA, BENGUET—Four more rock sheds are being planned to protect Kennon Road from recurring landslides, a Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) official said on Sunday when President Marcos inspected the rock shed construction there and condemned it as an anomalous project.
DPWH Cordillera planning division chief Andrew Dacwag said the 152-meter rock shed was actually intended to run a stretch of 248 meters, but Congress slashed its proposed P500-million funding in the 2022 National Expenditure Program (NEP) to P274 million.
He added that the 2026 allocation for the project’s second phase, covering an additional 97 meters, was halved from the initial P200 million.
“So building the second half is unlikely. So we will divert the funding instead to repairing the collapsed section of the road,” Dacwag said.
‘Disaster spots’
Built by the Americans sometime around the end of the Philippine-American War and opened in 1905, the mountain road named after US Col. Lyman W. V. Kennon was considered the most expensive road project at that time, costing $2.7 million.
Archival records note that Kennon defended that cost, citing the complexity of mountain road building, including rock blasting.
Kennon Road has served as a vital link between Baguio City and lowland provinces. But after the July 16, 1990, earthquake that devastated Baguio, engineers identified more than 400 “disaster spots” along the more than 30-kilometer road.
In recent decades, Kennon Road has become vulnerable to landslides during heavy rains. It is frequently closed to travelers, and, since 2017, the government has spent about P3.7 billion for its upkeep.
Landslide zones
According to Dacwag, budget allocations do not adequately account for the higher costs of building in mountainous areas.
“Regional funding proposals are always changed in the GAA (General Appropriations Act), such as what they call insertions. [We would] wish that what is stipulated in the NEP is no longer changed,” he said.
Although rock sheds had been envisioned for Kennon, Japanese engineers deemed the zigzag route too risky for erosion and instead installed the first such structure along Marcos Highway (now called Ben Palispis–Jose Aspiras Highway) in 2001.
Dacwag said the DPWH had recently identified 21 “hot spots” along Kennon.
“But we have stabilized most of them,” he said, adding that the remaining active landslide zones in the Camps 2, 4 and 6 sections of the road require rock sheds.
Pocket mining
High river flow during storms also poses engineering risks. Lawyer George Fukai III, who heads Tuba town’s Task Force Kennon, said a local businessman has secured permits to harness the Bued River for hydropower.
Meanwhile, the government is in talks with the Japan International Cooperation Agency for development assistance that may include the building of more rock sheds.
But Dacwag cautioned that local concerns also need to be addressed, such as small-scale mining.
He noted the emergence of new houses under the Kennon rock shed that could be linked to pocket mining, a practice that has destabilized that terrain.
In his inspection on Sunday, President Marcos criticized the rock shed and rock netting projects on Kennon as “useless.”
“It’s like the government threw money into the river,” Mr. Marcos said. “It’s like they did not build anything—no walls, no riprap, no slope protection. That’s what happened. That’s why the value of their work is zero, complete zero.”
