Lines of water consumers waiting for their respective turns to have their hand-carried containers filled in corner streets by the authorities have unleashed an image of oddity at the start of the rainy season.
At a time when the rains appear to start ushering in the monsoon season, the water level at the 131-meter high Angat Dam, which supplies 97 percent of raw water requirements for Metro Manila and nearby provinces, is visibly on a downswing.
The dam’s level of 158.02 meters recorded before the weekend is on a steady plunge and very near the lowest level of 157.56 meters recorded in 2010—its normal high water level, according to the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) is 210 meters.
Three months ago, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System said it would solve the water shortage in some parts of Metro Manila and nearby Rizal province in five months, which gives a time line of August.
MWSS Administrator Reynaldo Velasco assured President Rodrigo Duterte then that the agency was doing its best to solve the water shortage problem while “putting to task Manila Water to give us a definitive time line of solving their distribution and operations systems to bring back to normal level the water supply to ease the suffering of the consuming public.”
Velasco had admitted the agency was in “a catch up mode” as far as water supply source was concerned since the main source, Angat Dam, was built in 1967 and no major water source had since been built save for some water supply projects from Laguna Lake by both Maynilad and Manila Water.
Authorities have noted it was only in the last two years when serious efforts were put in place to push for major water flagship projects like the 600 millions of liters (MLD) Kaliwa Dam, the 500 MLD from Wawa Dam, the 800 MLD from the unutilized water from Angat-Norzagaray, the 350 MLD from Bayabas Dam as well as the 500 MLD from Laguna Lake.
While drenched consumers mark time in corner streets waiting for rationed potable water under the rains, they get understandably uptight encoded rebates in their monthly water bills are not reflective of the truth.
