Water

Water everywhere but not a drop to drink! That’s the likely situation faced by many of our countrymen in the hard-hit areas of Typhoon Ompong.

I know it sounds ridiculous to talk about a water supply crisis at this time. But it is very relevant. We get typhoons more frequently bringing massive flood damage for the same reason a water supply crisis is in our future.

Climate change! It’s global. During my last two visits to California, I noted a serious water crisis has become a hot political issue. Driving through the farm areas between Los Angeles and San Francisco, I noticed billboards put up by farmers demanding water.

That was the year they barely had any rain and farmers of course need water to make their farms productive. The main source is the Colorado River but so many other areas are depending on the same river not just in California but other nearby states.

Someone once said that the next big war will be over water rights. In Northern Africa, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia are fighting over water of the Nile River.

About 85 percent of Nile’s water comes from the highlands of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is building a dam to produce power. The speed by which Ethiopia fills up the dam will affect the downstream flow.

Regulating the flow of the water through the Ethiopian dam will benefit Sudan that will now be able to get water year round. Egypt is predicted to have a water shortage by 2025 and is therefore worried. It had depended on the Nile River since ancient times.

Water is a life and death issue for the Egyptians. BBC quotes Egypt’s minister of water resources and irrigation saying that “If the water that’s coming to Egypt is reduced by two percent we would lose about 200,000 acres of land.

“One acre makes one family survive. A family in Egypt is average family size about five persons. So this means about one million will be jobless. It is an international security issue.”

We take availability of water for granted in the Metro Manila area except when water service is cut off due to some emergency. Mercifully, since private concessionaires took over water distribution, water pressure and service delivery have vastly improved.

But strong typhoons or heavy rainfall during habagat season cause Maynilad Water to restrict delivery of water to its subscribers due to water turbidity. Water in Maynilad’s system has more suspended solids (top soil run off due to deforestation) than in Manila Water’s system which has the benefit of La Mesa dam to make sediments settle.

Our bigger worry should be about our 98 percent dependence on Angat Dam for our water supply in Metro Manila. Even if it had been recently reinforced, Angat reservoir is located near the West Valley fault line.

If the Big One that will break up Metro Manila into four big parts happens, we may also lose all of our water. It was reckless for past administrations to have taken this big risk. If anything bad happens, all past presidents are criminally liable or should be.

Every one of them since Marcos had the opportunity to develop at least one other source: Laiban Dam in Rizal province. But absolutely nothing happened. I remember that San Miguel’s Ramon Ang presented an unsolicited proposal to develop Laiban that was not so much rejected as it was ignored.

Laiban is now in the list of flagship projects to be financed and built by Chinese ODA under Build Build Build. But Chinese funding is taking time so we cannot be sure if this project will finally get done.

In the meantime, because of the failure to build Laiban, we are wasting some eight billion liters of fresh water from the Sierra Madre mountains that end up flowing into the Pacific Ocean every day. This is absolutely a scandalous waste of resources God has given us.

The rest of the country is in even worse situation. There is no national water agency that is planning and executing any coherent project to provide for water needs outside of the NCR.

I have heard of proposals to put up a Department of Water and that makes more sense than keeping the present Department of Energy whose main functions have largely been privatized. A Cabinet-level water department will be able to focus on the water needs nationwide.

But we need a competent and honest person to run this department. The closest agency we have is the Local Water Utilities Administration and during the Arroyo years, it had a politician as head who did a lot of things, including buying a dying bank, except developing water projects.

In the meantime, it is the DENR looking after water issues. But DENR has so much in its plate and may not be able to focus as required by our water problems.

In a recent meeting of the private sector-led Water Alliance, it was revealed that we have seven years before this looming water scarcity hits us in crisis proportion. If nothing is done, our economy will be crippled and most of us may not even be able to take a bath or flush toilets.

According to the Asian Development Bank, water stress is expected to worsen. By 2025, the country will face a deficit in water availability in several river basins, and all major cities are expected to experience water shortages. 

The Water Alliance counts about 16 million Filipinos who still do not have access to safe drinking water. I think there are a lot more. Many communities suffer from illnesses and deaths, due to poor water quality and inadequate supply.

Addressing our water needs should be government’s top priority. Let us not wait until we get the last drop from our faucets. Even now it may already be a little late.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco