A trip to Pantabangan, Nueva Ecija

Brief History of

Municipality of Pantabangan

Located in the northern part of Nueva Ecija, Pantabangan then was a small village at the foot of Mt. Mabilog below Mt. Dalimanok which are found between Sierra Madre and Caraballo Mountain ranges. The place was discovewred on November 30, 1645 by Fr. Juan Alonzo de Abarca, an Augustinian priest who with the 29^thSpanish mission in the Philippines.

The village grew into a settlement and was officially included in the map of the Philippines in 1747. in 1900, Pantabangan formally became a town.

In May 1966, the Old Philippine Congress passed the Upper Pampanga River Project Act (Republic Act 5499) authorizing the construction of the Pantabangan Dam and its appurtenant structures. The groundbreaking ceremony led by then President Ferdinand E. Marcos took place on June 11, 1971. The project was finally completed in August 1974.

The construction of the Dam had great economic and social impact on the lives of Pantabangeños. About 8100 hectares of productive farmlands were submerged and the residents of the town proper (East and West Poblacion) and seven of its outlying barangays (Villarica, Liberty, Cadaclan, San Juan, Napon-Napon, Marikit and Conversion) were relocated in nearby places which later formed to what is now known as the new Pantabangan town. They had to start their lives all over again in a new place where the future was uncertain. They were left with no choice. Indeed, the Pantabangeños sacrificed so much – in the interest of the nationaql economic growth.

The Pantabangan Dam the cleanest Dam in the country and acclaimed as the second largest Dam in Asia, generates 112 megawatts of hydroelectric power and supplies the irrigation requirements of about 77,000 hectares of agricultural lands in Central Luzon.

In February 1996, the then President Fidel V. Ramos led the groundbreaking ceremony of the Casecnan Transbasin Project, a 27-kilometer tunnel from the Casecnan River in Nueva Viscaya to a terminal point at the Pantabangan reservoir and was commissioned on December 11, 2001. the project aims to augment the capacity of the Dam to irrigate an additional 50,000 hectares of agricultural land and generate an additional 140 megawatts of hydroelectric power for the Luzon grid.

The present Pantabangan town has 14 barangays and a total land area of about 41,735,314 hectares. The succeeding years since its relocation saw its progress from a fifth-class municipality in 1975, then to a fourth-class, then to a second class Municipality in 2006 and finally, in July 2008, pursuant to Section 2 of the Department of Finance Order No. 23-08, Pantabangan was reclassified as First-Class Municipality. It is the only town in the Philippines which boasts of three hydroelectric plants within its territorial jurisdiction.