Capayas Dam

Overview

Capayas Dam is in Barangay Calanggaman, Ubay, Bohol. It sits along the national highway and is described in the BPTO inventory as one of the largest dams in Bohol province. The dam serves as the primary water source for residential supply and agricultural irrigation in the Ubay area.

Location

Barangay Calanggaman, Ubay, Bohol. Ubay is in eastern Bohol, near the DBP Forest and the Philippine Coconut Authority facilities. The dam is visible from the national highway. The dam site itself lies about 6 km southwest of Ubay Poblacion, in the gently rolling hill terrain characteristic of that part of the island.

Getting There

From Tagbilaran City, travel east and north toward Ubay — approximately 3 hours by bus. The dam is along the national highway in Barangay Calanggaman and can be seen from the road. [TO ENRICH: confirm exact road landmark for the turnoff or viewpoint]

Practical Info

• The dam is accessible from the national highway — roadside visibility is confirmed.
• Primary function is water supply and irrigation; tourism is secondary.
• [TO ENRICH: whether a designated viewpoint or access point exists for visitors, operating hours if applicable, entrance fee]
• Nearby Ubay attractions include the BFAR Marine Hatchery, BFAR Brackishwater Fish Farm, Benliw Dam, and Bongbong Rolling Hills.

What to Expect

The dam reservoir provides the landscape context — a large body of water set in the rolling terrain of eastern Bohol. Visitor infrastructure is minimal: this is a working piece of water infrastructure that happens to be listed in the tourism inventory, not a developed tourist site.

Per the JICA basic design study for the project, the dam’s finalized design outline specifies a dam height of 18 m and a dam length of 1,160 m; the Philippine government’s original project request specified a dam height of 17.0 m, a dam length of 1,150 m, and a storage capacity of 2.3 MCM (million cubic meters). The dam was designed to irrigate a 750-hectare command area in Ubay.

[TO ENRICH: exact construction/completion date, and dam type — earthfill, concrete, etc. — not specified in the JICA basic design study located]

Notes

• Economic context: The dam is the major source of potable water and irrigation water for the Ubay area — a critical piece of agricultural infrastructure in one of Bohol’s largest eastern municipalities.
• Ubay is the gateway municipality for the eastern Bohol coast and the Bien Unido island group.
• Avoid visiting during typhoon season (July–September) when road conditions in eastern Bohol can deteriorate.
• Research pass (2026-07-28): Dam height, dam length, storage capacity, command area, and distance from Ubay Poblacion were sourced from the JICA “Basic Design Study Report on the Project for Capayas Irrigation” (1989) — Volume 1 and its construction-materials volume, accessed 2026-07-28. Both are scanned PDFs with no text layer; facts were extracted via OCR (tesseract) directly on the fetched documents, not from a search-engine summary. The report gives two slightly different design-stage figures for the dam (18 m height / 1,160 m length in the finalized project outline vs. 17.0 m / 1,150 m / 2.3 MCM in the original Philippine government request) — both are reported in the body since the discrepancy reflects normal design revision between request and final study, not an error.
• Unresolved — construction/completion date and dam type: not stated anywhere found in the 1989 JICA basic design study (checked full 109-page OCR text plus the construction-materials volume). This is a pre-construction design study, so the actual build/completion date would postdate it and wasn’t found in this source. No other source with verifiable, traceable content was found this round.
• Unresolved — designated viewpoint/visitor access point, operating hours, entrance fee: attempted a fresh angle this round beyond general web search — checked TripAdvisor’s “Capayas Dam” listing directly (returned HTTP 403 on every fetch attempt, including via a fetch proxy, so its search-snippet claim of “no admission charge” could not be verified and was not used); checked dailyphilippines.com/ubay-exploring-capayas-dam-and-eco-park/, which is a dead/parked domain that redirects to a generic lander page with no content; checked theboholana.blog’s 2019 “Places to go in Ubay” post, which does not mention Capayas Dam by name; a Facebook post referencing “Kapayas Dam, Lomangog, Ubay, Bohol” as a swimming/recreation venue could not be fetched or verified (Facebook requires login for content access). Note: that Facebook snippet’s barangay name (“Lomangog”) differs from this file’s Barangay Calanggaman — an unverified discrepancy worth a future check, not acted on here since it wasn’t a flagged tag and touches located_in/coordinates territory.
• Unresolved — exact road landmark for the turnoff/viewpoint: the JICA report situates the dam site generally (~6 km southwest of Ubay Poblacion — now added to the Location section) but names no specific landmark (junction, signage, bridge, barangay hall, etc.) marking a turnoff or viewpoint. No local source checked this round (search engines, TripAdvisor, Facebook, dailyphilippines.com, theboholana.blog) specified one.