Angat Dam construction set to start

MANILA, Philippines - The construction and phasing of the rehabilitation of the Angat Water Transmission Improvement Program (AWTIP) is all set to begin following its launch of the project over the weekend.

The AWTIP, one of President Aquino’s priority projects, aims to ensure the sustainable provision of water supply and mitigate the risk of a total loss of raw water supply in Metro Manila, Rizal, Bulacan and portions of Cavite.

“AWTIP is not just another tunnel, it is about water security, equality, fairness and levelling up the lives of many Filipinos that continue to be deprived of access to safe water at reasonable price, which is a basic human right,” Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) administrator Gerardo Esquivel said.

The project aims to improve the supply of water to Metro Manila from the Angat Dam in Bulacan by building a fourth tunnel in the transmission line.

A new tunnel from Ipo reservoir to Bigte reservoir will be built with a diameter of four meters and length of 6.4 kilometers and a transmission capacity of 19 cubic meters per second.

The new tunnel will make the flow of dam waters to Metro Manila more efficient and address the increasing demand in the Metro.

“The construction of tunnel 4 is necessary to mitigate the risk of a partial or total disruption of water supply for Metro Manila. It will  enable the system’s full design capacity to be restored by allowing the upstream tunnels and downstream aqueducts to be sequentially closed, inspected, and rehabilitated or decommissioned,” Esquivel said.

Apart from this, the AWTIP will rehabilitate the raw water transmission system to improve its reliability and security of water supply from the Angat reservoir.

Rehabilitation will include sustained operations of the aqueducts and improvement of disaster risk preparedness and asset management.

Last March, the ADB has approved a $123.3 million loan to MWSS which was guaranteed by the national government, as represented by the Department of Finance in the negotiations.

AWTIP is a component of the MWSS legacy roadmap, which aims to transform MWSS from purely water distribution to being a guardian of water security for Metro Manila.