Clearing the Green

But when a typhoon struck Rizal in 2025, a muddy flash flood tore through her home. Unbeknownst to residents, the mountain behind their community had been cleared and flattened by heavy machinery to make way for a wind energy project. Forests that had protected these communities from floods for generations were being stripped away, and all in the name of clean energy.

Talim Island is not alone.

Backhoe on the mountain

In the same province, 34 turbines are planned for the 219MW Talim Wind Power Project awarded to Island Wind Energy Corp., a subsidiary of Singapore-based Vena Energy.Residents said they only learned of the project when heavy equipment arrived and began  clearing parts of their mountain on Talim Island.

 Jayson Villones, 31, who grew up on the island and a co-convenor of KAPIT SA TALIM, a community group opposing the project, said no vehicle had ever reached the summit of Mt. Tagapo before construction began

 "Before, we had no idea there was going to be a wind project built. I only started questioning what was happening on the island when we saw a backhoe working up on the mountain,” Villones said in Filipino.

Environmental advocates in Calbayog City knew as early as 2023 that Gemini Wind Energy Corporation had filed an ECC application with the DENR-EMB, even as the city council submitted a resolution endorsing the project. But the application moved faster than they expected. The ECC was already approved before the public hearing for Calbayog City residents was even held in October 2025 — a reversal of the sequence the process is supposed to follow. The PAMB had already issued a favorable recommendation for the project, allowing Gemini to secure the ECC in September 2025.

Harold Mercurio, an academic at Northwest Samar State University and Vice President of Save Calbayog Rivers Foundation, a Concerted Effort (SACRIFICE), said they were blindsided.

"We were caught off guard by how fast they processed the application. We only found out the ECC had already been approved at the public hearing they held at NwSSU [Northwest Samar State University],” Mercurio told ERC.

SACRIFICE led a signature campaign, filed objections, and publicly raised the alarm after learning that 13 of the 37 turbines were sited within the protected landscape.

"How can you be green if thousands of trees will be cut down? This is legal deforestation based on the ECC and the cutting permit that will be applied for with the DENR.," Mercurio said.

According to Gemini's project description and Environmental Impact Statement, the total application area spans more than 10,000 hectares, although the actual footprint of turbines, roads, and supporting infrastructure is expected to occupy roughly 255 hectares. No final estimate has yet been released on the number of trees that will becut. 

Silverio Palima Sr., the village chief of San Joaquin and a member of PAMB, the Protected Area Management Board, said the board's position eventually became clear that the turbines cannot be allowed within the protected area.

The opposition pushed the Sangguniang Panlungsod to pass a resolution in November 2025 strongly opposing turbine construction inside the CPHPL. By February 2026, Vena Energy presented a revised design to the city council with no facilities inside the protected landscape. 

The council then passed SP Resolution No. 2026-08-113, conditionally approving the project — provided all facilities, including access roads, remain outside the CPHPL. The resolution also noted that the project will not directly supply electricity to Calbayog City.

But even as the council deliberated, Gemini had already begun compensating residents for trees to be cleared from their land. In March 2026, Alona Caridad, 52, of Barangay San Joaquin received PHP15,000 (USD244) for two coconut trees on her land. She was told the area will be used for an access road. A company representative came to her home with a check. She signed an acknowledgment receipt, but was not given a copy.

"The area where we used to farm will be part of the access road," Caridad said in Waray. 

Other residents of Barangay San Joaquin confirmed they also received payments for the clearing of their coconut trees, but declined to be identified for this story.

Palima said he refused to issue the barangay certification that Gemini needed to pursue its right-of-way permit applications.

Engr. Hennency Hayag of the Environmental Management Bureau in Region 8 said the ECC was issued because Gemini followed the required regulatory process, including securing a favorable recommendation from the PAMB. He confirmed that Gemini has since filed an amendment to the ECC, revising the project design to move all turbines outside the protected area.

"No turbines are now inside the protected area," Hayag said.

But he confirmed that the full Environmental Impact Study for the amended project has not yet been submitted, and no amended ECC has been issued. The 24 turbines proposed in the adjacent forest land remain part of the application.

The ERC has also reached out to Vena Energy for comment for this story, but have not received any response.

Eva Prudenciado, 57, was born and has spent her entire life in Caglanipao Sur village in Calbayog City. As the village's disaster risk reduction head, she has spent more than a decade tracking floods, organizing evacuations, and keeping records of every extreme weather event that has hit the community. In all those years, she had never seen floodwater rise the way it did during Tropical Storm Ramil (known internationally as Tropical Storm Fengshen) last year.

“In just minutes, the water suddenly rose, the flood surpassed the barangay, which happened for the first time,” Prudenciado said in Binisaya, noting that it was not even a super typhoon.

Caglanipao Sur is one of 14 host barangays for the Gemini Wind Energy Project.

Prudenciado connects what happened to years of illegal logging in the mountains behind their community with no replanting. 

“There is nothing left to protect our water in the mountains,” she said.

In Rizal, the stakes extend further downstream. Tristan Montemor of Masungi Georeserve describes the karst landscape of the Upper Marikina River Basin as a sponge that collects rainfall from the surrounding mountains and releases it gradually, regulating water flow for communities as far as Metro Manila.

Global Forest Watch data shows Rizal province lost more than 5,000 hectares of tree cover between 2001 and 2025. The pace of loss has been accelerating — 2025 recorded one of the highest annual figures in a decade.

"We can already see the effects of forest degradation. We get to experience intense flooding, we get to experience stronger storms," Montemor said.If the remaining forest is further fragmented by turbine construction, roads, and powerhouses, he said, the impacts of flooding and droughtdownstream would intensify."For these megastructures to be built in protected areas, it would really be very difficult for us to restore a huge portion of the ecosystem, if not impossible," Montemor said.

SACRIFICE and other community groups said they are not opposed to renewable energy development. But for them, the projects’ locations are the problem.

“We have to make sure that we do not lose our dependable and abundant supply of water, and that we do not compromise our forest cover in the next 50 to 100 years for the next generation,” Mercurio said.

Back in Calbayog City, Prudenciado fears that wind energy construction will further strip the slopes, and that the company's promised rehabilitation will come too late.

“How many more years before the trees grow back? ” she asked. “My generation will not live to see it.”