That the Cebu provincial government and the Manila Water Consortium will embark on a P700-million water distribution project is welcome news in a province where the life-giving liquid is becoming scarce.
Expected to provide at least 35 million liters daily of potable water sourced from Carmen town’s Luyang River, the project, once implemented, should ease pressure on the groundwater aquifers in the island’s north and central areas.
With the abundance of water from the river, the cost of bringing the precious resource to homes in the province should not be a drain on pockets.
Members of the water board, two of whom will come from the consortium, two from the government with a fifth member picked by both sectors, are expected to draw a reasonable pricing scheme.
We hope that aside from being kind to concessionaires, the consortium and government leaders will take measures to protect the Luyang River.
We do not want the waterway to go the way of the biologically dead Guadalupe and Butuanon Rivers.
We trust that the consortium’s record of conservation “at every level of the water supply cycle to ensure sustainability and reliability of services to customers” in Manila will continue in Cebu.
We also hope that consortium “initiatives such as watershed management, sewerage and sanitation, groundwater protection and power-saving programs” will inspire small water firms to incorporate better practices in their business, especially with regard to sanitation to avoid repeats of typhoid outbreaks as those that hit Tuburan and Alegria towns.
The impending project in the north should be a guiding light to decision makers at the Metropolitan Cebu Water District, which provides water to the bulk of households in the metropolis.
Pumping groundwater will not serve the island’s most densely populated area for long.
Leaving the aquifers soon, in an extended La Niña season as the one we are in, would give them time to recoup.
This, if done in conjunction with the sustainable sourcing of water from elsewhere, say, Talisay City’s Mananga River or any of the dozens of waterfalls down south, would reduce the costs of slaking the populace’s thirst.