Baguio water harvesting plans up now that summer ends

BAGUIO CITY—The first thing residents here did last week when weather experts announced the end of summer was to place water drums under their rain gutters.

Water supply in the summer capital has been rationed since the 1980s and communities have coped by collecting rainwater.

The city receives the highest rainfall volume in the country, weather bureau records showed. Government engineers want to improve the city’s rain harvesting capacity by building a collecting system at the Baguio Convention Center (BCC) before embarking on a bigger rain harvesting project at the City Camp Lagoon.

According to a November 2011 report provided by government geologist Benigno Cesar Espejo, the City Camp Lagoon serves as a natural catchment basin for 25 villages and five tributaries surrounding the area.

Ireneo Gallato, Baguio district engineer, said Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson had instructed him to set up a reservoir of treated water on this flood-prone area like a similar facility in Fort Bonifacio. The project will entail a comprehensive geological and technical study because it may displace some residents.

Gallato said the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) intends to provide Baguio households and business establishments a model they could use to collect and store clean rainwater.

But residents who collect rainwater through ordinary gutters and down spouts could not be assured of its quality and potability, said Cordelia Lacsamana, city environment officer.

Gil Duque, a DPWH senior engineer, said the BCC rain impounding project reroutes the rainwater collected from the facility’s rooftop to an underground cistern, measuring 15 meters by 30 meters, with a content capacity of 6,700 drums of water (or 356,000 gallons of water).

The agency also redesigned the roof and gutter systems of three public schools, which would collect and divert rainwater into water tanks that would supply the schools’ toilets, he said.

Councilor Betty Lourdes Tabanda sponsored a resolution that would encourage neighborhoods and building owners to design and use their own water harvesting facilities.

But Duque said private projects should require engineering reviews because some of Baguio’s older buildings may not be able to hold the weight of a rooftop water reservoir.

Officials of the Baguio Water District (BWD) said water harvesting has been a viable alternative source of water. The BWD generates a daily supply of 50,000 cubic meters of water from the city aquifer, but heavy urbanization, the increase in population and an erratic weather have affected the recharging rate of these water sources, said Teresita de Guzman, BWD general manager.

In the last few years, strong rains have not come in sustained bursts to completely replenish the aquifer, she said.

She said the changes in rain patterns may also affect the design of new rain-impounding facilities.

The BWD operates a rain basin at Mt. Sto. Tomas, which can store 500,000 cu. m of water that can supply the city’s southwest communities during the rainy season.

But the long periods of dry spell in the last few years failed to keep the rain basin at its maximum capacity, De Guzman said. Plans to rehabilitate the rain basin to increase its capacity to 800,000 cu. m of water have been stalled pending a review of the design, she said.

The rehabilitation and expansion of the rain basin would have cost P380 million, she added. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon