There was a time when Metro Manila was told repeatedly to make every drop of water count.
That catchword has come under sharp focus in the last fortnight, after thousands of households in Metro Manila and the outlying towns began to wobble from water woes, not helped any by the dry spell from the El Niño phenomenon which unofficially ushered in the scorching heat of summer.
Sans decent warning, Manila Water, the sole provider of water and wastewater services to more than six million people in the East Zone of the metropolis, cut the water supply in at least six cities in the national capital and seven towns in adjacent Rizal province.
What has taken the situation literally down the bottoms of the dams—the main sources of Metro Manila’s water supply are the Angat, Ipo and La Mesa—is that these are reported drying up to rather low levels because of the absence of rain.
The water from these dams eventually is processed by the La Mesa and Balara Treatment Plants, which convert the water from a raw state to clean and potable water.
On Thursday, officials watching the dam situation said La Mesa, built in 1929 and can hold up to 50.5 million cubic meters in a 27-square-kilometer area in Quezon City, had plunged to its lowest level in 21 years at 68.74 meters as of March 14, a spine-chilling layout from 68.75 meters in 1998.
The Philippine Air Force itself has confirmed it will begin cloud seeding operations, with the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council releasing P18.3 million to the Department of Agriculture’s regional officers to address the El Niño phenomenon.
But the National Irrigation Administration has raised some injunction that cloud seeding, where substances like salt are dumped onto targetted clouds to induce rainfall, should be the last resort in addressing drought which, according to the weather bureau, would affect 33 provinces by the end of May.
The 33 are among the 42 that will go through a dry spell up to end of March following the large-scale ocean-atmosphere climate interaction linked to a periodic warming in sea surface temperatures across the central and east-central Equatorial Pacific.
In the metropolis and nearby towns, meanwhile, residents remain guardedly zestful, given their optimistic culture.
But the last drop from their faucet might just be the unappeasable mallet for their culture of tolerance and good humor.
As the 20th century English-American poet W.H. Auden, known for his “Funeral Blues,” had said: “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.”