Never-ending water woes
Credit to Author: BEN KRITZ, TMT| Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2019 16:52:31 +0000
BARELY three months after a water shortage of near-apocalyptic proportions, residents and businesses in Metro Manila and the nearby provinces have again been told to prepare for supply interruptions by the two water companies serving the metropolis.
According to Maynilad and Manila Water, about 12.3 million customers will be affected by the impending “rotational service interruptions.”
The culprit, as before, is dry weather. In March, the El Niño drought was blamed for lowering the La Mesa reservoir (from which Manila Water draws its supply) below a useful level. This time, a lack of rain – even though Pagasa has already declared the official start of the rainy season – has reduced the level of the Angat reservoir, which is the main source of 96 percent of Metro Manila’s water, to nearly 160 meters above sea level. The normal minimum operating level of Angat is 180 meters; 160 is below the level of dams outlet pipes. There is an emergency outlet below 160 meters, but it hasn’t been used in nearly 10 years, and even if it is still functioning properly, it will only supply water at a reduced volume for a limited time before the reservoir level drops too low for any of the outlets.
Managing the March water shortage probably aggravated the current problem, as President Duterte ordered extra water released from Angat to replenish La Mesa. In hindsight, that was perhaps not a good call, but it highlights the fundamental problem the metropolitan area faces: There is not enough water to properly supply everyone all the time. Juggling the existing supply is the best anyone can do at this point.
The best available solution right now is the planned Kaliwa Dam project, which will create an additional water source that should be sufficient for at least a couple of decades at the current rate of population growth. Whether or not the government can get the project off the ground is still a bit uncertain, however, because of resistance to it by some special interest groups.
Those trying to stop the Kaliwa Dam project offer three arguments for doing so: The reservoir and associated facilities will wipe out about 300 hectares of protected wilderness in the Sierra Madre. The area is also tribal land belonging to the Dumagat-Remontados people. Finally, the proposed financial structure of the project is politically questionable, since it was changed from a PPP project to a government project primarily funded by a loan from China. In fact, according to some political activists’ uncanny ability to look at a large, four-legged mammal and see a zebra instead of a horse, the March water crisis may have been a contrivance by the Duterte administration to get people to accept an onerous deal from China.
Because of these factors, the dissenting groups say, the P18.7-billion project should be canceled and a safer alternative found. There has not yet been any options of similar capacity proposed by anyone, however, meaning that the government faces a choice between following through with Kaliwa Dam project, or doing nothing at all.
The first two factors are valid concerns, and some reasonable solutions for them must be found and made part of the project. Unfortunately, there is not much to be done to mitigate the environmental damage the new dam and reservoir will cause; a considerable amount of land will be under water, and there is no way to avoid that short of killing the entire project. Besides maintaining the area surrounding the new reservoir as a protected watershed, the government could consider designating a similar area of land elsewhere as a wilderness protected area. It’s an imperfect solution, but at least the country would not have a net loss of wilderness area.
Likewise, there is not a perfect solution for addressing the displacement of the indigenous people, but an acceptable compromise can be found. Compensating the Dumagat-Remontados for their land, relocating them to suitable areas as near as possible to their home territory, and providing other financial and social assistance as they may require should all be part of the project costs.
Although addressing the environmental and social issues adds burdensome requirements to the project, resolving them is clearly feasible. The third argument, that the project risks putting the country into a Chinese debt trap, is frankly ridiculous and ought to be ignored entirely. Despite the theoretical advantages of a PPP structure for major public works projects, the Philippines’ experience with them has been less than satisfactory, and unnecessarily costly for consumers. The current tenuous state of the water supply infrastructure is a stark example of what can go wrong, and is the best argument against the original PPP plan for Kaliwa Dam. PPP may have other valid applications, but water supply for Metro Manila is clearly not one of them.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
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