Will Cebu have a water crisis?
We recently had Pagasa Regional Director Oscar Tabada as guest speaker in our Rotary Club of Cebu West meeting. While he was primarily invited to talk about the "haze" that was slightly enveloping Cebu at that time, his talk was really more about the severe changes in the world's weather.
It seems that the typhoons and storms are getting stronger and more frequent, the dry seasons are getter hotter, and we are getting more floods. Tabada believes global warming is happening and the volatile and extreme weather is the new normal. The coming "El Nino," which is the hot and dry season coming this February to May of 2016 - hot air from politicians running in the May elections included - will surely affect the water resources and supply in the Cebu province and Metro Cebu. I think these predictions must have been the reason Lito Osmeña volunteered to be the water czar, but was aborted due to political reasons.
A water crisis in Cebu have been discussed and predicted as early as the 1980's, primarily due to the over extraction of groundwater in the Metro Cebu areas. We have been extracting groundwater way beyond the replenishment rate because it is the cheapest source of potable water. Both MCWD and the private sector have over extracted from the groundwater, so when the water crisis in Metro Cebu will finally happen in 2030, the government and the private sector are equally to blame. I put 2030 as the critical year for the water supply crisis in Metro Cebu, since it took 30 years for the "Isochlor line," (salinity line) to move from Colon St. to Fuente Osmeña, which is some five kilometers. From Fuente Osmeña to the Lahug IT Park, which is three kilometers will probably take another 20 years given the accelerated urbanization of the city with more office buildings and residential condominiums. MCWD's number of service connections has been increasing between five to seven percent a year, and this is just what they can accommodate to serve; so the potential demand is really bigger and water consumption would be increasing at 15 percent annually in Metro Cebu. Global statistics supports this, since over time, when world population tripled, there was a six-fold increase in water consumption. So in seven years, at these rates of growth of water demand, Metro Cebu will need one million cubic meters a day from the present consumption of 500,000 cubic meters per day.
That Metro Cebu has not reached water crisis proportion earlier is a combination of geologic formation, social change, and water management initiatives. I had thought that volcanic geology would be more impervious to seawater intrusion, but it seems certain sedimentary formations are as impervious. This has to be validated still, but it seems to be buying Metro Cebu time in saving its water table. The widespread use of "bottled water" has also reduced the need for drinkable water from the faucets, so water from groundwater from contaminated wells are used for cleaning or flushing and are still utilized, but not as drinking water. The Metropolitan Cebu Water District, have actually reduced sourcing from the aquifers by getting from the Jaclupan Weir Dams, Buhisan Dam and from Bulk Water suppliers outside of the Metro Cebu. Out of the almost 200,000 cubic meter of water that MCWD produce every day, almost half are from the Weir Dam, Buhisan and from Bulk Water Suppliers. We need more "strategic water resource management initiatives" not just to buy more time to replenish Metro Cebu's water resources but to make it perpetually available for future generations.
Even if the Cebu island is shaped like a banana, which is not an ideal shape as far as rain water retention is concerned, the province as a whole is less water stressed since the population is concentrated in the cities. The extreme ends of the island, some of the isolated small islands and the mountain communities will have insufficient water during the summer months, but the affected population will be less. These will have to be addressed at the local level, especially if it affects food growing and livestock raising areas. Reforestation and local river basin management, which should be a continuing program, would address this problem.
In the next 20 years, the global water crisis will take center stage as more countries are water stressed. India, Bangladesh and Pakistan are already in the forefront of this problem with per capita availability dropping to less than 70 liters per day. In North America and Japan, water consumption is 350 liters per day, in Europe it 200 liters per day, in the Philippines it is 100 liters per day, while in sub-Saharan Africa it is 10 to 20 liters per day. We should think about these next time we waste water.
I was chairman of MCWD for 12 years, so water resource management is close to my heart, and I would not want Cebu to have a "water crisis" by 2030 or by 2050, or 2100. We owe it to our children and all future generations to preserve, conserve, and replenish our water resources. This is our only planet, unless we eventually get to Mars, and Mars will have water.
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