Lake LeonardMt. Leonard Kniazeff rises 1,190 meters or 3,904 feet above sea level. It lays serene on the basin of a wide fertile valley flanked by the highlands of the municipalities of Maco, Mawab, and Maragusan.
A stratovolcano, it last erupted in 120 AD give or take 100 years. The Philippine Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) describes Mt. Leonard Kniazeff as an active volcano. The area of the lake alternately expanded and shrank with time and man’s interventions. Its width varied from 11 hectares and a basin of about 194 hectares to 18 hectares in the 1970s. The basin gradually expanded to some 210 hectares following the operation of North Davao Mining Corporation (NDMC) until its pullout in 1992. From 1981 until it stopped operation, NDMC dumped into the basin thousands of tons of toxic tailings and wastes from its Amakan strip mining that killed the lake. In the wake of the transformation of the lake into the mining company’s waste pond, the barangay New Leyte community that developed in the lake’s fertile basin relocated to the uplands. |