Penge Tubig!
Sunday, July 29th, 2007Yea…I’ve been wondering about this topic myself. We’re always flooded with water with every rain that trickles our way…yet water supply to our area is soooooo damn hard to get! Kaya booming ang business ng mga "mineral water" and "water delivery" guys e! Tsk, tsk. Oy! Gloria! Gising, gising! Wala kaming tubeeeeg!
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Plenty of water near Metro Manila
THE BROWNOUTS and water shortage the country is now suffering from are a result of the inefficiency and negligence of the officials in the power sector. Didn’t they know when the supply of coal for the generating plants would run out? Couldn’t they have placed orders for more coal early enough? Couldn’t they have provided for reserve supplies in case of late deliveries by exporters? "Isang tambak silang gago." They don’t deserve the generous salaries and allowances taxpayers are paying them.
As for the officials in the water supply sector, didn’t they know that the rains are late and that water in the reservoirs is below normal levels? They should have imposed mitigating measures, such as warning the public to conserve water early enough, to prevent a looming water shortage. Instead, they tried to hide their inefficiency by keeping the power and water shortages secret to the public. President Macapagal-Arroyo should have fired them instead of that hapless chief tax collector who collected excess revenues but was fired to cover up the shortcomings of his superior.
Doesn’t the President find it ironic that Metro Manila, which is flooded after each heavy rain, is now, in the rainy season, short of drinking water? Water, water everywhere, but only a few drops to drink.
And doesn’t she know that Metro Manila need not suffer from a water shortage every summer if only her officials are doing their jobs? There is plenty of water to augment the supply from Angat Dam which runs short every year. I’ve written about this from time to time for the last 14 years that I sound like a broken record, but I’m not joking. There is plenty of water near Metro Manila just waiting to be tapped.
This water is impounded behind the Wawa Dam in Rodriguez (formerly Montalban). Wawa Dam used to be the main source of water for Manila but it was abandoned after the completion of the bigger Angat Dam. But now the supply from Angat is no longer enough and the Wawa Dam is still there collecting water behind it. It is just a stone’s throw from La Mesa Dam. All that is needed is to connect a few kilometers of new pipes from Wawa to La Mesa.
A water development firm, the San Lorenzo Ruiz Development Corp., a partner in the construction of the Casecnan Dam, has offered to harness Wawa for Metro Manila–at no cost to the government. But this is the mystery: The National Water Resources Board (NWRB) refuses to grant San Lorenzo the authority to do that. It has been sitting on its application for the last 14 years! The Philippines is notorious for its notoriously long red tape, but 14 years for an urgent project is too much. It merits a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
The NWRB refuses to say why it is sitting on the application either. It just sits there doing nothing as if the application and the recurrent water shortages don’t exist. This is the big mystery. Why is the NWRB doing this even when the project is urgently needed, even when the government is not going to spend a single centavo for it?
I asked the NWRB this question a few times in the past but I never got a satisfactory answer.
Will the President please ask the NWRB for an explanation? Maybe it will be forced to give an honest answer. Or doesn’t she care a hoot about Metro Manila’s water supply? This and her act indirectly allowing a bunch of opportunists to make a lot of money by constructing a housing project inside the La Mesa watershed and therefore polluting the water supply point to her lack of concern for the welfare of Metro Manilans. Is it because she lost in Metro Manila in the last two or three elections?
If the NWRB doesn’t like San Lorenzo, why doesn’t it reject its application and turn to another developer? Apparently, it cannot do this without risking a lawsuit. For the law says that the first applicant to develop a water resource should get the contract. And San Lorenzo, by law, is entitled to the project.
Maybe the NWRB really wants to give it to another developer, such as the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS). But the MWSS has already abandoned Wawa and the law says that an entity that abandons a water project can no longer get it back. That is only fair.
So the NWRB is really in a bind. If it gives the project to the MWSS or any other developer, San Lorenzo will surely sue it and demand millions of pesos in damages. So what it is probably doing is to sit on San Lorenzo’s application so that it will tire of waiting and abandon the project, and give it a reason to award the project to another developer.
But in doing so, it is punishing the residents of Metro Manila who suffer from thirst every summer. Not only those who already have water connections but have little water flowing out of their faucets, but also those communities who are denied water facilities–such as the communities in Parañaque, Las Piñas and Muntinlupa–because there is not enough water to supply them.
Once Wawa is harnessed, it can also supply communities in Rizal without water connections at present, and farms in Bulacan that have no irrigation water. If only the NWRB will get off its ass and make a decision.
Meanwhile, for every day that the NWRB does nothing, millions of gallons of water sorely needed by millions of people go over the dam at Wawa, flow down the Marikina and Pasig rivers and go to waste in Manila Bay. In the last 14 years, we have probably lost enough water to float the whole of Metro Manila.
The water that goes over the dam, by the way, is the same water that floods the lower areas of Metro Manila as it flows down the two rivers on the way to the sea. If the Wawa Dam is harnessed, therefore, flooding in the metropolis would be lessened.
