IT didn’t make sense to me when I first learned about the project. The Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) will soon be bidding out what it calls the Bulacan Bulkwater Supply (BBWS) for a minimum of P24.4 billion under a 30-year build-operate-transfer, or BOT, scheme.
The project intends to meet the water-supply requirements of five component cities and 19 municipalities throughout the province, with a population that is projected to increase from 3.1 million to 4.2 million in one or two years.
(With the successful inauguration of the Iglesia ni Kristo-owned Philippine Arena in Ciudad de Victoria in Bocaue town, aggressive land-development thrusts by top land developers are anticipated to follow. The Henry Sy group, Ayala Corp. and the Manuel V. Pangilinan group are reportedly among the early birds in the future techno hub.)
The project owner would supply treated bulk water to districts from the treatment and conveyance facilities it would put up.
In its announcement, the Public- Private Partnership (PPP) Center said only five of the 15 interested bidders have qualified to join the yet-to-be-scheduled auction: Team-Polaris-Manila Water; First Philippine Holdings Corp. and Abeima Consortium; Filinvest Agua Consortium; San Miguel Corp.-K Water Consortium; and Prime Alloy Water Consortium.
My only reservation against this bulk water-supply project is that the government seems to be putting the cart before the horse in anticipation of the public’s needs. Shouldn’t it first worry about the sufficiency of the water supply for the areas supplied by the MWSS for the next three to five years?
You can have all the facilities for distributing clean bulk water, but if the overall supply is short, you could end up with public disorder or riots in your hands.
Right now, as far as I’m concerned, the most urgent need of the MWSS-serviced communities is a backup water reservoir next to the province’s Angat Dam.
I’m surprised that the MWSS itself does not seem to consider this to be an urgent or life-and-death issue.
Its own studies show that, by 2015, the water demand of MWSS-supplied communities will have soared to 5.6 million liters a day (mld). Right now, Angat Dam can only provide 4 mld. The MWSS tries to augment this with water drawn from the small Putatan and Sumag basins.
Actually, the idea of a backup reservoir for Angat Dam is not new at all. It was hatched and planned in the 1970s, under the martial-law regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos. Alas, nearly 40 years later, the project—called the Laiban Dam, to be built at the Kaliwa fork of the Marikina River—somehow ended up on the back burner, where it has stayed since.
Now, with no backup reservoir, what can we do under the circumstances? We can only pray that the 65-year-old Angat Dam does not crumble or collapse as a result of a high-magnitude temblor or, worse, some man-made calamity.
Should that happen—knock on wood—we will all go mighty thirsty.
I can think of only one more problem that could crop up once the bulk-water project is awarded.
The award of the project would mean that the proponent’s water needs for Bulacan would have to be filled first before Angat Dam’s daily water deliveries. As a partner of the government under the PPP concept, the government would have a contractual commitment to this effect.
In such a situation, the issue of who really “owns” the water in Angat Dam will inevitably arise in times of shortages, such as when its water level is critically low.
Indeed, the question of ownership of that water would have to be debated publicly. The first basic question is: “Should water, a substance close to life itself, be used as a source of profits?”
Below is an excerpt from the book Whose Water is It?, edited by Bernadette McDonald and Douglas Jehl:
“Who owns water, after all? Is it the property of governments, companies, private individuals, or no one at all? Who, if anyone, has the right to tell a property owner to limit his use of a river, a lake or an aquifer? What recourse, if any, should a citizen have if a company, a government or a neighbor takes away the water on which he relied?
“More broadly, is water a resource so ‘essential to life,’ as Hannah Griffiths of the environmental group Friends of the Earth has put it, that it should be treated as a universal right, with every person guaranteed the ‘fundamental right’ to a clean, healthy supply? Or, because its supply is simply limited, should it be treated as a commodity and priced to reflect its value, so that it will not be wasted?
“Or does the answer lie somewhere in between, a public good subject to regulation, but also to the market, so that its price can serve as a bulwark against waste and can help recoup more of its increasing cost?”
E-mail: omerta_bdc@yahoo.com.
1 comment
Goodbye, Butch. May the good Lord give you rest. Love, Marie