Blackouts turn faucets dry in Mindanao areas

Tuesday, 27 March, 2012 Written by Christine F. Herrera


THE faucets have run dry on some islands in Mindanao after the eight-hour daily blackouts knocked out their deep-well pumps, Agham Rep. Angelo Palmones said Tuesday.


“The residents on the island provinces and municipalities like Zamboanga, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi have to resort to manual wells,” Palmones said.


“The residents are also boiling the water for drinking to avoid contracting diseases because there is not enough power to run the treatment plant. The prices of bottled water have skyrocketed.”


The island’s plantation owners, meanwhile, are complaining that their banana, pineapple, palm and rubber exports are threatened by the lack of electricity to power the pumping stations that irrigate their farms, according to Ramon Floresta, president of the Kidapawan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a member of the Mindanao Business Council.


The losses in banana exports alone could hit $1.6 billion, Floresta said.


In Davao City, the local water district is looking for P11 billion to cope with the water shortage and to upgrade its facilities.


The Davao City Water District, a government-owned and -controlled corporation, serves only about 60 percent of the city’s population, and only 106 of its 182 villages receive pipeline services. That translates to only 4.86 percent of Davao City’s total land area, a company report says, while demand is growing at an average of 3.24 percent a year.


From 257,511 cubic meters in 2011, the demand for water is expected to shoot up to 321,606 cubic meters by 2018, water district officials say.


A major project is the creation of the P8.48- billion Tamugan Surface Water Development system that aims to develop surface water sources aside from ground water.


“We want to develop it because we want to prevent the over-utilization of our ground water source,” said Ariel Noble, the district’s corporate planning manager.


“This ground water source is not infinite. There will come a time it will be exhausted, so we’re trying to prevent that.


The district now gets 99.81 percent of its water from ground water sources. A medium-term objective is to cut its water losses to 15 percent by 2018.


The district’s other projects include the drilling of additional wells, the construction of additional reservoirs, and the extension and improvement of its Panacan and Cabantian facilities.


“We will need P11 billion in order to implement these projects as more than P8 billion will go to the surface water project,” Noble said. With Maria Bernadette Lunas


(Published in the Manila Standard Today newspaper on /2012/March/28)