CEBU, Philippines – The Metro Cebu Water District is encouraging developers and every individual to patronize it considering that it has the mandate to provide potable and safe water and be responsible for the environment.
In line with this call is the challenge the MCWD faced over the unregulated water extraction done by some private water extractors.
MCWD corporate planning head John Macabenta said some of these private water extractors do not have permit from the National Water Regulatory Board.
“They do not have meter to measure how much volume of water they are taking from the ground and they don’t monitor the quality of water they are taking, maybe its saline or a lot of nitrate already,” said Macabenta during his presentation on Securing Water for Metro Cebu.
MCWD’s franchise area covers the cities of Cebu, Lapu-Lapu, Mandaue and Talisay and the towns of Consolacion, Cordova, and Lilo-an.
Macabenta said that for 2015, the demand per day within their franchise area is 371,000 cubic meters, but they can only serve 163,000 cubic meters or about 43 percent of their customers.
Although MCWD has a daily production of 218,000 cubic meters per day, part of it goes to physical losses, commercial losses and to their corporate social responsibility (firefighting, barangay assistance, among others), he said.
Since only 43 percent of their customers are served by MCWD, the remaining 57 percent get their water from ground water sources, said Macabenta.
These private entities, whether domestic, commercial or industrial, take water from the ground in its own property or from a private supplier taking a very large volume of water.
MCWD, Macabenta said, currently has its own sources coming from surface water and desalinated water.
He said MCWD gets 34 percent of water from the common aquifer while private individuals, commercials and industrial establishments get the 66 percent.
“We have a common aquifer. Just like sipping from a one glass of water and all of us are taking it together,” he added.
On the other hand, Macabenta said they want developers to get their other services aside from providing water.
“We want you to consult us before you develop your project. Big developers come to us even before buying the land. They want to know what our projects are. We want to encourage you before you buy your own property and before you develop, include MCWD in your planning and development,” the MCWD official further said. — /NSA (FREEMAN)