‘Overkill’ in Angat upgrade needed, says MWSS

NORZAGARAY, Bulacan—The Angat Dam will require “an overkill” in engineering and technological upgrade to spare 15 million residents from empty faucets in the near future, according to a government feasibility report that studied how best to improve Metro Manila’s chief source of potable water.

Gerardo Esquivel, the administrator of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS), discussed last week the results of the study commissioned by Malacañang to guide the P5-billion retrofitting and rehabilitation of the 44-year-old Angat Dam and reservoir.

The project will commence with a public bidding for contractors in July. Actual construction will start in February 2013.

Esquivel said the modern Angat facility should be completed in the first few months of 2015 and recommissioned before President Aquino ends his term of office.

According to an MWSS report, which was transmitted to Aquino last week, the Angat Dam needs strengthening because of overdependence on its stability and sustainability by millions of people. The dam is also situated 200 meters away from the West Valley fault line, and extreme weather patterns have affected how it operates.

Apart from the reservoir, the facility operates as a hydroelectric power plant and as an irrigation water source for Central Luzon farms.

Any damage to the dam would affect 15 million people and would deduct 246 megawatts of electricity distributed daily by the Luzon grid.

The bigger consequences would be the devastation caused by unimpeded floods on 500,000 people living downstream from the dam and the loss of water feeding 30,000 hectares of farm lands, the report said.

Additional spillway

Esquivel said the government’s engineering options included building an additional spillway and the widening of the dam and dike embankments, to increase its water containment capacity from 210 meters above sea level to 216 masl.

“The MWSS approach to improve the dam can be considered an overkill, but we do this because we are sensitive [to the needs of Metro Manila] and the needs of people living downstream from the dam,” he said.

He added: “I know that [people have been concerned about wild reports that the dam is worn-out and has cracked from the weight] but there is nothing to worry about. [We are introducing] complete remediation and instrumentation [to the facility].

“The International Commission on Large Dams has just finished [analyzing the Angat Dam improvement project]. They came after [engineering consultants] Tonkin and Taylor and its Philippine counterpart, Engineering Development Corp., finished their study.”

An improved Angat Dam can accommodate an additional volume of water (400 million to 600 million milliliters per day), he said.

This would address periods of extremely strong rains and when a drought affects the provinces, he said.

On February 18, religious organizations staged a prayer and dance ritual at the hills surrounding the dam to seek divine protection for their water source.

Ronnie Santos, a pastor of the Gracious God Community Fellowship, led 18 other Bulacan ministries in performing what they described as their “Jericho March.”

But unlike the biblical reference, they formed a circle not to seek the destruction of the dam but to ask the heavens for protection, Santos said.