An Act Creating the Lake Lanao Rehabilitation and Development Authority, Defining Its Powers and Functions, and Providing Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes

This creates a Lake Lanao Rehabilitation and Development Authority as a body attached to the Office of the Chief Minister, responsible for the overall policy-making, planning, coordination and management of the lake's rehabilitation and development, with regulatory and supervisory authority over programs and projects in the Lake Lanao area.

The board is assembled at the top of government. A Chairman appointed by the Chief Minister chairs it; the Minister of Environment, Natural Resources and Energy is Co-Chair; and the Ministers of Agriculture, Public Works, Trade, Transportation, and Finance sit as members, alongside the Director General of the Bangsamoro Planning and Development Authority, a representative of the Provincial Government of Lanao del Sur, and 2 representatives of non-government organisations appointed by the Chief Minister from nominations.

The instrument at the centre of the Act is a 30-year Master Plan, and Section 16 specifies what it must contain: an assessment of the physical and natural resources and potential of the Lake Lanao area, its social and economic conditions, hydrological characteristics and power potential; the development of scenic and tourist spots and conservation of water resources; and proposed rehabilitation projects including watershed protection and management, flood control, the revival and restoration of the lake's biodiversity, maintenance of desirable water quality, and socio-economic projects using local raw materials. Everything from provincial to local level must be anchored on that plan, and it must be reviewed regularly against its targets.

Section 18 requires an independent review every 10 years by a panel of experts appointed by the Chief Minister, reporting to the Chief Minister and to Parliament. Section 20 provides that any doubt in interpreting the Act is to be construed liberally in favour of fulfilling its objectives.

The bill argues from the ecology, with footnotes — to the Australian Museum on biodiversity and to WWF on ecological balance — and from the physical fact that Lake Lanao drains through only one outlet, the Agus River in Lanao del Norte.

That single outlet is why the lake is both ecologically fragile and economically valuable, and the bill's answer is a plan rather than a prohibition: a 30-year horizon covering water quality, biodiversity, watershed, flood control and the livelihoods that depend on all of them, with everything else required to align to it.

The bill also records where it came from. A footnote on its first page states that it was inspired by the entry of Najib A. Haron in the Online Bill and Resolution Drafting Contest run by the offices of MP Ampatuan and MP Mitmug, under the title "An Act Creating Lake Lanao Rehabilitation Program to Preserve, Beautify, Improve, Restore and Utilize the like for Socio-Economic Purposes".

The 30-year Master Plan is this bill's real instrument, and it is a better fit for the problem than a regulatory body alone would be. Lake Lanao's difficulties — siltation, water quality, biodiversity loss, a shoreline that moves with the drawdown — are cumulative and slow, and none of them is solved inside a political term. Writing a 30-year horizon into the statute, requiring provincial and local activity to anchor on it, and specifying its contents down to hydrological characteristics and power potential, commits successive governments to a single document rather than to a sequence of projects.

What the bill conspicuously does not do is name the National Power Corporation. The Agus River appears once, as the lake's single outlet; the Master Plan must assess the lake's "power potentials"; and the entity that actually operates the hydroelectric complex on that outlet has no seat, no obligation and no mention. Bill No. 111, covering the same lake, seats NAPOCOR on its board. A plan that assesses power potential without binding the power operator is a plan that can be written and then contradicted by the drawdown, and this is the gap a committee comparing the 2 bills would have to close.

The board composition is the other half of the comparison. Seven ministers in person, a chair appointed by the Chief Minister and 2 NGO seats is a heavyweight regional body — it can requisition attention across government in a way Bill 111's board of provincial directors cannot. The cost is distance: 1 seat for the Provincial Government of Lanao del Sur, no seat for Marawi City, none for the municipal or barangay leagues, and no consultative assembly. The lake is governed for the province rather than by it.

The independent review in Section 18 is the provision most worth keeping from either bill. A panel of experts, appointed outside the Authority, reviewing its policies and programs every 10 years and reporting to Parliament as well as the Chief Minister, is the only external check on a 30-year plan in either document — and 30 years is 3 of those reviews, which is roughly the right cadence for a body whose results cannot be judged in less.

One thing about this bill's provenance deserves recording, because it is rare. The measure began as a citizen's entry in a drafting contest and says so on its own first page, naming the entrant. Three bills in this registry carry that footnote — this one, the Halal Food Certification bill and the bill on the safety and welfare of minors — all traceable to contests run by MP Ampatuan's office with MP Mawallil and MP Mitmug. A parliament that takes legislative text from the public and credits the author by name in the filed copy is doing something most legislatures do not, and the practice is visible only in the footnotes.

Two bills in this registry create an authority for Lake Lanao and they are not versions of each other. Bill No. 111, filed by MP Ramos in October 2022, creates a Ranaw Development Authority run by provincial officials and covering the whole of Lanao del Sur. Bill No. 155, filed by MP Ampatuan in March 2023, creates a Lake Lanao Rehabilitation and Development Authority run by ministers and confined to the lake area. Both are still at Second Reading, Committee Stage. Neither has become law, and the lake has no authority of any kind.