CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga—A 4,000-hectare watershed along the Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales mountain ranges needs immediate reforestation to prevent a water crisis around Clark and its surrounding cities and municipalities.
Renato Tayag Jr., head of the Sibul Ni Aeta Foundation, warned that the aquifers around Clark were drying up owing to the area’s increasing population, massive business establishments, and climate change as shown by findings of international institutions and research companies.
The foundation has started planting 30 hectares of land in Sitio Target at Sapangbato, Angeles City amboos, fruit-bearing trees, different seasonal vegetables and others for the Aetas’ needs as their contribution to the impending water crisis. Tayag said their excess produce was being sold to public markets in the area.
The World Bank, through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, funded a study on the status of aquifers near Clark and its vicinities sometime in 2008 with the Bases Conversion and Development Authority and Clark Development Corp. as implementing agencies, but the result has not been made public for unknown reasons, Tayag said.
At present, he said that a private company is supplying potable water inside the former US Air Force base and not a government entity whose aquifers are now drying up because they are “over-pumped.”
“We must act together now before water rationing starts on or before 2025,” Tayag said during a media forum here.
Non-government organizations, stakeholders and local government must work together to prevent the crisis by planting the watershed with fruit bearing trees, bamboo, coffee trees and other plants, Tayag said.
Proper planting in the mountain ranges of all kinds of trees will be the turning point, Tayag said, because it will take five years before these can effectively absorb water instead of it going down the hills to the rivers and streams.
Building dams to serve as water retention and conservation basins is another method of saving water from the mountains, he added. Rebuilding the watershed is also good for agro forestry and ecotourism for provinces, Tayag noted.
Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan is appealing for a presidential proclamation for the immediate planting of watershed trees in the three provinces, a move approved by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the region.
Pamintuan, who is also the president of the City Mayors League of the Philippines, assured Tayag that he would do his best for President Rodrigo Duterte to sign the proclamation as soon as possible.
Angeles and the other cities near Clark, namely San Fernando, Mabalacat, Porac, Magalang, all in Pampanga, Banban in Tarlac and Cabiao in Nueva Ecija, are booming because of their proximity to Clark.
Angeles City alone, Tayag said, has seen its population rise from 500,000 to 1.3 million during daytime, which is also being experienced by San Fernando and Mabalacat.
