Arturo Pineda Alcaraz

Alcaraz, Arturo Pineda | BIOGRAPHY

ARTURO PINEDA ALCARAZ was born in Manila, the Philippines, on March 21, 1916, the second child of Conrado Alcaraz and Paz Pineda. As a government auditor the elder Alcaraz moved frequently, so his five children attended schools in a number of different towns. ARTURO completed elementary school at Lucena, Quezon Province, in southern Luzon, in 1929. His father was then transferred to Camarines Norte, where ARTURO took his first year of high school, and then to Baguio City.

Going to high school in the cool hills of Baguio, which was then a pleasant small town, was a "wonderful experience" for the boy. In the early 1930s the region was enjoying a mining boom and Leopoldo Faustino, a cousin of his father and one of the first Filipinos to earn a doctorate in geology, was then Head of the Division of Mines of the Bureau of Science. He spoke so highly to the young man of mining as a career that when ALCARAZ graduated at the top of his class from Baguio City High School in 1933, he sought to prepare for that profession. Since there was no school of mining in the Philippines, he entered the College of Engineering, University of the Philippines in Manila. A year later when Mapua Institute of Technology, also in Manila, offered a degree in mining engineering, ALCARAZ transferred there, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Mining Engineering from Mapua in 1937.

Although Faustino had died, the current director of mines, Quirico Abadilla, was a family friend and offered the new graduate a job. Aware of how much his father enjoyed government service, ALCARAZ accepted and entered the Bureau of Mines (the former Division of Mines was elevated to a Bureau) as an aide in the geology division, even though his classmates were choosing higher paying jobs in industry. He was to stay with government the rest of his life, in spite of the fact that he saw his friends making more money in the private sector. As he said years later, it was sometimes difficult financially, particularly when his children were in college, but he was doing what he liked and getting some recognition for it.

Not only was he not desirous of monetary rewards, ALCARAZ was incorruptible. When in a position at a later period to influence the allocation and spending of large sums of government money, he was never tempted by offers of bribes or kickbacks. In fact, "I thought less of someone who came to me and said, 'if you would just consider this, there is something in it for you,' " he says and as a result, "I sleep soundly and have nothing to worry or be ashamed of."

A year after starting in the Bureau of Mines ALCARAZ decided he needed further training and took—and came first in—the government scholarship examination which qualified him for study in the United States (in 1938 the Philippines was still a commonwealth under U.S. sovereignty). Choosing the University of Wisconsin because of its academic strength in geology, ALCARAZ studied there with such well-known professors as Twenhofel in sedimentation, Winchell in petrography and Tyler and Leith in structural geology, the latter a field in which he was particularly interested.

Upon receiving his Master of Science in Geology, ALCARAZ boarded a Japanese ship in San Francisco for the return trip to the Philippines. It was the summer of 1941 and Japanese-American relations were fast deteriorating. When the ship was in mid-ocean the two nations froze each other’s currency, and thus ALCARAZ and the other returning Filipino scholars were stranded in Tokyo without funds after the ship failed to continue to the Philippines. They appealed to the American Embassy which found them passage to Shanghai, and after a month, to Manila. They finally arrived home at the end of August, nine weeks after they had sailed from San Francisco. As a young man, with no obligations or responsibilities, ALCARAZ thoroughly enjoyed his enforced holiday.

Rejoining the bureau on his return, ALCARAZ was assigned as Assistant Geologist to Busuanga Island, the northernmost islet off Palawan, to study the geology of manganese deposits there. The outbreak of the Pacific phase of World War II in December had little initial effect on life in Busuanga. At first the geologists there lived on the cash advance they had from the government. When food began to run short they approached the family of Lilia Sandoval Salas, the young lady whom ALCARAZ was courting, and were given a piece of land on which they raised sweet potatoes and other vegetables.

Following the fall of Corregidor (the island fortress guarding Manila Bay) in May 1942, the group decided to return to Manila to see how their families were faring. ALCARAZ found his parents well, but learned that under Japanese occupation the Bureau of Mines had been reduced to a skeleton force of which he was not a part. The next year, during which he stayed with his family in Manila, he encountered Maximo Lachica, the Director of the Weather Bureau which the Japanese had taken out of the hands of the Jesuits who had run it previously. Lachica, whom he had met on the ship returning from the United States, offered him the post of Chief Geophysicist, with the responsibility of studying earthquakes. He accepted the position in May. "There was not much to do as chief geophysicist in those days," ALCARAZ recalls, "so besides my regular work looking at seismographs, the director put me in charge of the cooperative store, doling out potatoes and salted fish!"

In 1944 Lilia Salas came to Manila from Busuanga for a minor operation. Since their respective families were already aware of their intention to wed, and they were alone in the city, ALCARAZ’s family having evacuated Manila, they decided to marry immediately. They were therefore married on Armistice Day (November 12 on the Asian side of the International Date Line) so that, as ALCARAZ puts it, "there would be peace in the family." They have since enjoyed peace and the three daughters born to them during the next six years: Marilyn (1946), Cynthia (1948) and Lillian (1950).

When Manila was liberated in 1945, ALCARAZ took leave from his government job and volunteered for a few months as a civilian engineer for the United States Army, surveying the port area for clearing and rebuilding. Lachica had passed away during the liberation and Casimiro del Rosario, an astrophysicist with whom ALCARAZ had spent many pleasant evenings peering through homemade telescopes, became director of the Weather Bureau when the government was reconstituted. ALCARAZ chose to remain under him as chief of the Geophysical Division rather than return as a simple geologist to the Bureau of Mines.

In the Weather Bureau ALCARAZ was responsible for monitoring earth movement and volcanic activity, both of which are frequent as the Philippines is in a region of crustal unrest. As he wrote in his first article on the subject, "The Major Structural Lines of the Philippines," the islands are criss-crossed by many planes of weakness in the earth’s crust along which faulting has occurred. Since tectonic earthquakes result from the sudden slipping of the earth’s crust along these faults, the structural lines, or fault zones, can be inferred from the distribution of the epicenters of some hundred-odd earthquakes which have been observed over recent years.

Volcanic eruptions are also frequent because the Philippines is part of the "Circum-Pacific Belt of Fire" and are apparently caused by or related to the lines of weakness extending along the same zone. There are at least 12 active volcanos in the islands, five of which—Taal, Mayon, Bulusan, Canlaon and Hibok-Hibok—are close enough to large communities to be of major concern. And where there are volcanos there are other thermal manifestations on the earth’s surface—hot springs, mud cauldrons and geysers—which are clues to underlying pools of hot water and steam that can be harnessed, as ALCARAZ came to realize, to produce geothermal energy.

ALCARAZ experienced his first volcanic baptism of fire in 1947 when Mayon Volcano in the Bicol region of southern Luzon erupted. Since the Geophysical Division was undermanned, he found himself studying the eruption with just the help of a weather observer. Having no vehicle of his own, he rode around the base of the volcano seated on the front seat of a public bus. Indicative of the informality of his role, after one meeting with municipal officials to discuss contingency plans for the population, an elderly woman approached him and asked, "Father, will you give confessions this afternoon?" In her prewar experience, the study of volcanos, along with the rest of the Weather Bureau’s duties, had been the province of Jesuit priests. ALCARAZ gently explained that he "was not that kind of father."

The following year ALCARAZ received a grant from the United States Government to study microseismology at Opalocka Naval Air Station in Florida. The grant was awarded under the postwar Rehabilitation Act to assist the Weather Bureau in learning to track typhoons by means of small vibrations recorded on seismographs. The U.S. Navy had tracked hurricanes in the Caribbean by seismographic triangulation (measuring from three points) and was interested in expanding its research to the Pacific; the project was thought to be beneficial to both nations. At the end of his training ALCARAZ stopped in Seattle, Washington, to attend the North Pacific Region Air Navigation Conference as an observer, since at that time the Philippine Weather Bureau and Civil Aeronautics Administration were closely allied. He also attended a meeting of the International Meteorological Organization in New Delhi later that year—and a second such conference in Hong Kong in 1950.

In September 1948 ALCARAZ’s office in Manila received word of increased earth tremors on Camiguin Island, off northern Mindanao, which were followed by an ash eruption of Mount Hibok-Hibok. A low rate of activity continued until December 1951 when a glowing avalanche, called a nu?e ardente (burning cloud), of intensely hot ash and gas spilled down the slope from the volcano’s dome, killing some 600 people. As a result of this tragedy the Commission on Volcanology (ComVol) was officially created under the National Research Council to study and observe volcanic eruptions in order to minimize the loss of human life. ALCARAZ was appointed Chief Volcanologist, the senior technical position and a post he continued to hold until 1974.

In 1953 the Eighth Pacific Science Congress was convened in Manila and ALCARAZ used the opportunity to become acquainted with colleagues from the Pacific Basin, including Gordon MacDonald of Hawaii and James Healy of New Zealand. This meeting had an effect on his thinking and his career because some of the scientists he kept in touch with were already investigating the possibilities of geothermal, i.e. earth-heat, energy.

ALCARAZ was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955 for two semesters of study at the University of California at Berkeley from which he received a Certificate in Volcanology. In 1957, as a member of the National Committee on the International Geophysical Year (IGY), he attended the IGY Conference for the Western Pacific Region in Tokyo, as well as the 9th Pacific Science Congress in Bangkok.

The volcanologists he met at these assemblies were happy to engage in an exchange of information and ideas. After a 1961 conference in Italy on new sources of energy—which ALCARAZ could not attend—Healy sent him the proceedings which included information on geothermal energy. The data sparked his interest. Although at the time oil was by far the cheapest available fuel, ALCARAZ knew that the Philippines, with its many hot springs, could easily develop geothermal energy and he began investigating the geology of likely areas with this thought in mind. Nevertheless volcanos were to keep him busy for the immediate future.

After 54 years of dormancy Taal Volcano, just south of Manila, erupted September 28-30, 1965. The blast came, not from the main crater as in previous eruptions, but from the southwestern flank, killing 190 persons and destroying two entire villages on Volcano Island, an island in the center of Lake Taal. As early as 1953 a volcanological station had been established on the island and surveillance had been carried on as well as possible under "conditions imposed by a sorely limited appropriation, lack of technical personnel, and inadequate equipment." A month or so before the eruption ComVol had called attention to the fact that the crater lake was heating up, and the press reported an eruption was imminent. When it failed to occur, the media lost interest and the 2,000 people living on the island, not noticing any more tangible signs of activity, went about their business. ComVol however convinced the Disaster Coordination Group and the Red Cross to undertake a survey of the population and the number of small boats on the island in order to effect an orderly evacuation if it proved necessary. Unfortunately the volcano erupted the day before the survey was to start. Most of the people who died were killed by flying debris or because their overloaded boats capsized. Understandably the loss of life caused a certain amount of public outcry against ComVol—which had been created specifically for the purpose of ensuring the safety of the population.

Sufficient funding was subsequently granted the commission to double surveillance of the volcano and studies were made to determine the pattern of the eruption in order to help the scientists predict future disturbances with greater accuracy. It was found that earlier in the year the volcano had undergone a moderately violent phreatic (steam) eruption, caused by water gaining access to the highly heated rocks beneath Volcano Island. The rise in the lake’s water temperature had been the only warning.

For his part, although he had more precise information on which to base his judgment, ALCARAZ continued to face the problem of deciding when to call for evacuations, what areas to evacuate and when to allow people to return to their homes. As he says, "it is hard to displace people and see them undergo hardship away from their normal place of living—and then have the volcano not erupt soon thereafter. On the other hand, if we are too optimistic and delay evacuation and the volcano does erupt, some lives may be lost." Friends sometimes advised him to release information in a guarded, equivocal manner so that if he were wrong he would not be called to account, but he was not tempted to protect himself at the expense of society. "I felt," he says, "that as long as I had thought the problem through carefully and to the best of my ability, then I would release the information in the way I thought it should be done and not worry about being wrong." Moreover, he adopted the attitude that ComVol should err on the side of safety: "by being too pessimistic we may have caused people to suffer, but at least they're alive!"

Mt. Taal erupted again in 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1969, and Mayon erupted in 1968. Studies by ComVol were able to predict the eruptions, and accurate warnings given by the commission prevented a loss of life.

An intensive perusal of the history of eruptions in the Philippines also led ALCARAZ to conclude that volcanic and seismic disturbances come in waves, interspersed with periods of quiescence. So certain was he of this theory that at the July 1969 conference of the International Association in Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior in Oxford, England, he predicted that Taal would erupt before the end of the year. Taal cooperated, but kept him in suspense until the 29th of October.

The geological activity that he had to deal with was not confined to volcanos. On August 2, 1968 an earthquake registering 6.8 on the Richter scale rocked Manila, causing the collapse of a six-story apartment and claiming over 300 lives. Less than two years later another tremor caused the collapse of a poorly constructed school building and sufficient dislocation of several other buildings for them to be declared unsafe and razed. After this second event ALCARAZ wrote an article castigating the public for paying insufficient attention to building standards in the postwar construction boom. "It must be realized," he wrote, "that mitigation of earthquake disasters lies not altogether in prediction of earthquakes, for of what value is prediction if the structure is already built? . . . We must learn to build safer structures, initiate measures aimed at disaster control, and above all learn to respond to emergencies brought about by these dynamic physical events with calmness, prudence and self-reliance."

In July 1964 ComVol had requested funds to begin the study of geothermal energy. The study was approved as a research project of the National Science Development Board—an institution sustained by a "science tax"—and was awarded 50,000 pesos (then about US$10,000) the first year and additional funds thereafter. The study began to bear fruit as early as 1967 when the first bulb to be lit by geothermal energy in the Philippines shone at Tiwi, near Mt. Mayon. For this experiment ComVol used steam from a very shallow small diameter drillhole to run a small generator which ALCARAZ borrowed from the Mapua Institute of Technology, the institution from which he graduated and where he taught night classes in geology from 1960 through 1981. In 1967, also, the government passed a law establishing the mechanism whereby the geothermal resources of the country—declared by this statute to belong to the state—could be explored, developed and exploited.

Three years later the Tiwi Geothermal Field was set aside by President Ferdinand Marcos as a geothermal reservation to be administered by the National Power Corporation (NPC). Since the NPC did not immediately organize a geothermal division, it seconded ALCARAZ as a consultant. In July that year ALCARAZ was sent on a Colombo Plan Fellowship for a three-month training course in geothermy to the University of Kyushu, Japan.

As a consultant, and prior to 1974 when he became Chief of the Geothermal Division of the NPC, ALCARAZ directed National Science Development Board projects: Study of the Tiwi Geothermal Area for Power Utilization, Study for Commercial Development of the Tiwi Geothermal Field for Power and Industrial Purposes, and Study of the Tongonan and Burauen Geothermal Areas, Leyte, for Power Utilization.

Geothermal projects are typically broken down into three basic categories: exploration, development and exploitation. Exploration involves geologic mapping, geochemistry studies and geophysical surveys. Development of the geothermal fields requires geologic, geochemical and engineering services, infrastructure construction and environmental studies. The exploitive process, which is ongoing, is concerned with the power plant itself—its design, construction, maintenance and operation, and with the management of the thermal reservoir.

From the beginning of his interest in geothermal energy ALCARAZ suggested that the government take advantage of foreign expertise, experience and risk capital in order to speed up the time needed to pass through the exploration and development phases and bring the geothermal power plants "on stream," and to avoid making costly mistakes. In consequence the NPC asked Union Oil of California, already engaged in basic exploration and drilling at The Geysers in California, to evaluate the Tiwi site with an option to develop it. Union Oil was so enthusiastic that it set up a wholly owned subsidiary, Philippine Geothermal Inc. (PGI) and, according to ALCARAZ, was willing to provide 100 percent of the risk capital. However the Philippine government, through the NPC, elected to supply 25 percent of the financing. The PGI agreed to explore and drill in the Tiwi Reservation and supply the resultant steam to NPC constructed-owned-and-operated power generating plants that would convert the geothermal steam into electricity and feed the latter into the existing power grid system of Luzon. The decision came not a moment too soon, for in 1973 the price of fuel oil sky rocketed and the search for alternative sources of energy became a matter of national urgency.

Following the light bulb test of 1967, and with a small two and a half kilowatt generator it bought, ComVol also experimented in using geothermal energy to evaporate sea water to produce salt. Shortly thereafter an acute rise in the price of salt due to the filling of salt beds for conversion into housing subdivisions, caused the government to support the salt-making venture. Therefore, in conjunction with the research and development arm of the Philippine Navy and the National Science Development Board, the salt-making study of ComVol was enlarged in 1971 and a bigger plant was set up capable of producing one ton of salt a day. Part of the salt was iodized and distributed by the Nutrition Service Center of the Department of Health in connection with its nationwide goiter control program. Some of the fine-grained salt was used by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Administration (successor to the Weather Bureau) for its cloudseeding and typhoon moderation operations.

In 1972 ALCARAZ made his first visit to New Zealand’s geothermal installations at Wairakei and Broadlands to study their "wet steam" or hot water systems. High temperature geothermal energy has two forms, "wet steam" and "dry steam." Vapor-dominated "dry steam" fields, such as The Geysers in California and Larderello in Italy, are easily exploited with conventional technologies. The development of a hot water field, the type found in the Philippines, requires more sophisticated engineering and New Zealand was in the forefront of such research. ALCARAZ therefore was commissioned to negotiate with the New Zealand government for development assistance, and an initial agreement for financial and technical aid emerged in early 1973. Exploratory wells were to be drilled in the Tongonan geothermal area on Leyte Island with New Zealand’s Kingston, Reynolds, Thom and Allardyce, Ltd. as the implementing agent. In 1975 the assistance program was expanded to include the Palimpinon-Dauin Geothermal Project on the island of Negros.

The government also negotiated with Italy, which at that time ranked second in the world in the production of geothermal energy. Credit agreements were entered into in 1974 between the NPC and Interbanca of Italy, to be applied exclusively to payments for supplies, equipment, and consulting, engineering and technical services from Italy. As a result, Electroconsult of Milan was hired as overall consultant on geothermal matters by the NPC. Meanwhile in 1973 the Union Oil-PGI service contract was amended to include the development of the Mt. Makiling-Mt. Banahao (Mac-Ban) geothermal field.

ALCARAZ had left ComVol in 1974 and transferred to the NPC as Chief of its Geothermal Division. Two years later the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) was created to manage the exploration and development aspects of geothermal activities. ALCARAZ’s staff was accordingly transferred to the EDC, but since he himself had just reached 60—EDC’s retirement age—he remained with the NPC as Corporate Specialist and Consultant to the EDC. After his official retirement from government service in 1981 at age 65 he was retained by the EDC as a consultant, doing the same work as before, but now on a contractual basis.

The first geothermal power generating plant with a three megawatt capacity was opened in Leyte in 1977. By 1980 Tiwi and Mac-Ban were each capable of producing 220 megawatts, and in the first half of 1982, when another 110 megawatts were added at Tiwi, the Philippines attained the second highest geothermal generating capacity in the world, outdistancing Italy and New Zealand, its mentors. If all goes according to plan, by the end of the decade additional units will be capable of producing one-fourth of the country’s energy requirements, or 2,654 megawatts. This is the equivalent of 14 million barrels of fuel oil and represents an annual savings of at least US$476 million in foreign currency based on the 1982 fuel oil price of US$34 a barrel. The chief advantage of geothermal energy is that, unlike fossil fuel, it is a renewable resource if handled properly. This requires that waste water from the plants be reinjected into the ground where it can seep down to the hot magma below and become reheated and available again for harnessing. Reinjection is also an environmentally acceptable way of disposing of harmful chemicals in the effluent, such as arsenic and boron, but much remains to be learned about the techniques of recharging the aquifers.

At present not all of the power generated at Tiwi and Mac-Ban can be used because the transmission lines have not kept pace with the increase in power. A future problem also looms concerning the utilization of power from Leyte, the island which has the greatest geothermal potential, but is not heavily populated. The cost of generating and transmitting power by undersea cable from Leyte to densely populated Luzon may well be prohibitive, since the current must be changed from alternating to direct and back again as it moves into and out of a transmission cable. On the other hand, ALCARAZ notes, "if we consider the need of additional power in Luzon it may be worth it." A partial alternative would be to encourage industry to move to Leyte. This policy, which could bring a measure of prosperity to that island, is being actively pursued by the government. A huge copper smelting plant is expected to open as part of Leyte’s first industrial estate in the near future.

ALCARAZ has also pointed out that although foreign exchange will be saved by using an indigenous source of energy, the cost of electricity to the consumer is not likely to go down, particularly in the Luzon grid area, since the power that reaches the consumer is produced by an "energy mixture" from several different sources, including thermal, hydroelectric and oil. Expenses other than the cost of generation, such as increases in cost of materials and labor for exploration, distribution and maintenance, will continue to militate against a decrease in the consumer’s electric bill. Nonetheless, the input of geothermal energy is expected to moderate that increase, since sharp rises in the cost of oil will be less of a factor.

Geothermy also has a whole range of direct or non-electrical uses. Aside from saltmaking and drying food products, it has been used in processing pulp for paper, drying rice palay, growing food in greenhouses or mushroom beds, and in binary systems for refrigeration and evaporation units. In a binary system water or steam with an insufficiently high temperature for direct power generation is used to heat a coil containing fluids, like freon or isobutane, of low boiling point. The latter, turned to gas, are used for low-level power generation. ALCARAZ has urged Philippine research in this field to supplement the work currently being done in Japan and the United States.

Between 1972 and 1975 ComVol also initiated studies on low-pressure natural (marsh) gas occurrences. The resultant project, financed by the National Science Development Board, is a joint undertaking of ComVol, the Bureau of Mines and the University of the Philippines. A pilot gas collector was installed in Angat, Bulacan, and has since been used to provide gas for cooking. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate the possible use of natural gas and to motivate people living in the vicinity of natural gas seeps to benefit from the virtually free source of domestic fuel.

The phenomenal growth of geothermal energy in the Philippines has been promoted by the winning combination of government support, "the institution of the proper legal and administrative machinery to implement its program," and firm leadership at all levels of development, according to a study made by the East-West Center of Hawaii. Also instrumental was the bold approach which ALCARAZ initiated.

Time was the chief factor governing ALCARAZ’s decisions after the 1973-74 oil crisis, and giving priority to time required greater risk taking. "The economic value of time was given much weight in the planning and decision-making processes," ALCARAZ says, which meant, "putting in a little more risk capital than what would have been needed by an orthodox and conservative approach." The risk was further compounded by the decision to undertake a bold casing program. An exploratory well is normally dug using a small bore pipe. If the well proves productive, it is redrilled with a bigger—working—casing designed to bring sufficient hot water or steam to the surface. ALCARAZ encouraged instead the use of a large casing to begin with, reasoning that if steam was found it could thus be utilized immediately. Fortunately his teams were careful with their preliminary investigations and 85-90 percent of the wells drilled were productive.

The well siting program was designed to complement this bold approach. After a well was drilled and was a steam producer, other wells were sunk in a cluster around it to maximize the find, rather than drilled as "delineation wells" to define the limits of the field and indicate its total productive value. With "cluster wells" a power plant could be in production sooner, although the field potential remained little better than an educated guess. It was a gamble but so far it seems to have paid off.

For ALCARAZ, his decisions on geothermal development were "of the same magnitude" as his decisions at ComVol, but this time millions of dollars rather than people’s lives were at stake. He was acutely aware that money sunk in dry wells, while scientifically interesting, delayed the development of power and used up funds that might have gone for other economic programs. However, as the only technical person on the development staff, he advised the government to take risks and gave his considered opinion in a forthright manner, refusing to hedge in order to protect himself. His advice to act boldly, fortunately, has proved wise.

ALCARAZ is now promoting the establishment of a "Center for Applied Geothermal Energy Studies" to be located at one of the developed geothermal fields. Such an institution would make the Philippines a training, research and information center for the entire Pacific region. His idea, he feels, is as practical as it is visionary, considering the extent to which geothermal capacity and expertise has already been developed in the country, the nation’s central location in the region, and the fact that English is widely spoken there.

Although his years in government service have been demanding, ALCARAZ has found time and personal energy to write extensively in his three fields of expertise—volcanology, seismology and geothermy—and has acted as Contributing Editor in Geology for the Philippine Journal of Science since 1972. He has participated as Philippine representative in various international conferences, symposia and workshops, in such diverse places as Australia, Japan, the United States and the Soviet Union, and has served outside his specific energy field as a member of both the Section on Solar Energy and the Technical Review Committee of the Philippine Nuclear Power Plant of the NPC. During his years at ComVol he was consultant to the Presidential Committee on Relief and Rehabilitation and to the Disaster Relief Committee of the National Red Cross.

His membership in professional and learned societies include the: National Research Council where he served for four years on the Executive Board; Philippine Association for the Advancement of Science of which he was a founding member; Philippine Geological Society; Philippine Society of Mining, Metallurgical and Geological Engineers; Meteorological Society; Geodetic and Geophysical Institute; Soil Science Society; National Committee on Geographical Sciences, and the Geographical Society of which he was the Director for the year 1970-1971. In 1970 he was also a member of the Advisory Group, Association of Ministers of Science in Asia, an organization of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the 1979 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for International Understanding for "supplanting national jealousies that led to confrontation, with increasingly effective cooperation and goodwill among the neighboring peoples of Southeast Asia"), and has been a member of the association until the present.

The Philippine government, the scientific community and his alma mater have all recognized ALCARAZ’s contribution over the years. In 1962 Mapua Institute of Technology gave him its award as Outstanding Alumnus in the Field of Science and Technology in Government Service; in 1968 he received the Presidential Award of Merit for his work in volcanology and his initial work in geothermy; and in 1971 he was given an Award for Science from the Philippine Association for the Advancement of Science (PHILAAS). Awards of Appreciation were presented him in 1974, 1977, 1981 and 1982 by the organizations and colleagues with whom he worked, and in 1980 he was the recipient of both the Gregorio Y. Zara Memorial Award in Basic Science from PHILAAS and the Geologist of the Year Award from the Professional Regulatory Commission.

Although ARTURO ALCARAZ’s leadership in the exploration and development of geothermal energy has been demonstrably bold and courageous, he is a softspoken man who strikes observers as "shy and rather humble." Colleagues, who hold him in high regard, report "he has not changed over the years." Having taken an early decision to remain in government service despite more lucrative offers elsewhere, he has inspired others with his dedication, and with his honesty in a position where decisions involving vast sums of money are constantly being made. He continues to commute to work from a modest frame house in an old section of Makati, Metro Manila. Happy to be of use, he enjoys his present consultative position which gives him "more time to read and think about crazy ideas [for the Energy Development Corporation] to follow."

August 1982

Manila

REFERENCES:

Aguila, Loreto G., et. al. "The Role of the Commission on Volcanology in Line with Program Thrusts of the New Society." Memorandum. 1975. (Mimeographed.)

Alcaraz, Arturo P. "Crustal Unrest in the Philippines," The Philippine Geologist. Manila. Vol. 22, no. 4, December 1968.

______. "Cyclical Occurrence of Volcanic Eruptions and Destructive Tectonic Earthquakes in the Philippines," Annual Report of the Commission on Volcanology for Fiscal Year 1971-1972.

______. "Earthquakes Hit Manila Anew," Fookien Times Yearbook. Manila. 1970.

______. "Geothermal Energy—What it Means to the Philippines." Paper read at the Foundation Day Program of the National Power Corporation. Manila. October 27, 1977. (Mimeographed. )

______. Geothermal Research and Development Program of the National Power Corporation. Manila: National Power Corporation. April 1975. (Mimeographed.)

______. "Heat Consideration in the 1965 Taal Volcano Eruption," The COMVOL Letter. Manila. Vol. 3, no. 4, July-August 1969.

______. "The Major Structural Lines of the Philippines," The Philippine Geologist. Manila. Vol. 1, no. 2, March 1947.

______. "Nature, Causes and Seismological Technique, with Particular Reference to the January 25, 1948 Iloilo Earthquake," The Philippine Geologist. Manila. Vol. 2, no. 2, March 1948.

______. "The potentials of Geothermal Energy for the Country’s Electrical Power and Subsidiary Uses." Presentation to Group Discussion. Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Manila. September 3, 1982. (Typewritten transcript.)

______. Proposal for a Center for Applied Geothermal Energy Studies (CAGES). (Mimeographed.)

______. "Role of the Commission on Volcanology in Operation Mayon," The COMVOL Letter. Manila. Vol. 2, no. 3, May-June 1968.

______. "Surveillance of Taal Volcano," The Philippine Geologist, Manila. Vol. 20, no. 1, March 1966.

______. "Volcanoes: Benefactors not Malefactors," Ibid. Vol. 17, no. 4, December 1963.

Alcaraz, Aruturo P. and Rogelio Datuin. "Geothermal Power Development in the Philippines," NSDB Technology Journal. Manila: National Science Development Board. October-December 1981.

______. "Prognostic Evaluation of the Current 1970-1971 Taal Activity," Annual Report of the Commission on Volcanology for Fiscal Year 1971-1972.

Commission on Volcanology. Silver Jubilee. December 1977. (Mimeographed.)

Paz Demetrio C. and Juan P. Reside. "Development of Geothermal Power in the Philippines," Philippine Architecture, Engineering and Constructive Record. Manila. September 1971.

Quiambao, Crescencio B. "Geothermal: A New Source of Energy." Tiwi, Albay. 1980. (Xeroxed.)

Ravenholt, Albert. "Energy from Heat in the Earth," American Universities Field Staff Southeast Asia Series. Vol. 25, no. 5, March 1977.

Sasuman, Fannie B. "Arturo P. Alcaraz, 'Godfather Geothermal,'" Interlock. National Power Corporation organ. Manila. March 1979.

Interviews with Arturo P. Alcaraz and those knowledgeable about his work.

source:http://www.rmaf.org.ph/newrmaf/main/awardees/awardee/biography/10