MWSS to build homes at La Mesa watershed

Environmentalists already have their hands full keeping woodcutters out of and replanting the denuded La Mesa Dam watershed. Now they face added headache. Hundreds of waterworks employees are to erect houses in the very forest they are tasked to guard, which could spoil Greater Manila’s water supply.

Legal work for the housing plan of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System has been secured. But experts from the University of the Philippines warn about likely contamination of the reservoir. It’s a clash of basic needs of a few with the interest of the many, akin to allowing street hawking versus traffic flow or squatting along railways versus passenger safety.

Sounding the alarm, Bantay Kalikasan and allied conservationists are calling a meeting tomorrow on the planned MWSS employee housing. They aim to raise public awareness of a problem in the giant backyard pond from where 14 million people draw water. A press briefing is set at 11:30 a.m. at the Luna Hall, Luna Gardens, Rockwell Center, Makati City.

The housing project is to rise on a 58-hectare stretch of the watershed fronting Quirino Avenue, upstream from the dam in Novaliches, Quezon City. Already, 1,441 employees have been awarded by raffle to buy lots at a bargain of P5.50 per square meter. Backing them is an absolute deed of sale for the tract, executed in compliance with a Supreme Court ruling that the issue had long been decided, and that "nothing remains for the completion of the project except for the (MWSS) to sign the deeds in question."

Housing is a natural concern of two workers’ unions: the Kaisahan at Kapatiran ng mga Manggagawa at Kawani sa NWSA, and the Balara Employees and Laborers Association. Many employees serve all their productive years at the La Mesa reservoir and watershed, and at the filters in nearby Diliman, only to retire with no permanent homes. By virtue of a collective bargaining agreement in 1968 the MWSS, then called the National Waterworks and Sewerage Administration, ceded to the unions 58 hectares of land outside the watershed perimeter and downstream from the dam. Before the employees could build, however, President Ferdinand Marcos ordered the transfer of the Water Treatment Plant in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, to the housing site. This necessitated the designation by the MWSS of the present site inside the forest as replacement. Meanwhile, commerce boomed in the surrounding area from real estate development.

A later set of MWSS executives, uneasy about razing the forest edge, contested the new site. A lawsuit rose all the way to the Tribunal, which upheld the scheme. Still another batch of officers commissioned an environmental-impact study by the U.P. Hydraulic Research Center. The latter concluded: "It will be in the best interest of MWSS and the general public who eventually utilize for drinking water in the La Mesa Reservoir that the 58 hectares proposed for the MWSS housing project shall remain a protected watershed and not be converted to a housing area."

Constructing the houses means cutting the trees in 58 hectares of the 1,300-hectare forest. For Bantay Kalikasan, this would negate four years of expensive reforestation in more than a thousand hectares once poached by woodcutters in surrounding slums. Its work has taken a toll on lives. Two years ago, a volunteer forest guard was hacked to death in front of his wife at a sapling nursery by loggers he had earlier confronted. Bantay Kalikasan took over forest guarding duties years after the MWSS, strapped for cash, backed out of patrolling the perimeter. With the housing, Bantay Kalikasan will also have to step into the safety of potable water from the reservoir, a task that is rightly MWSS’.

One legal block stands in favor of the conservationists. Despite the Supreme Court ruling and the issuance of the deed of land sale, building may commence only after the Department of Environment and Natural Resources issues an environment compliance certificate. Bantay Kalikasan isn’t so sure of blocking such issuance. The two unions twice had been offered bigger housing sites in Antipolo City, but turned these down.

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