SURIGAO CITY, Philippines – Water has become so scarce in this city that people joke that anybody would have difficulty distinguishing a faucet from an antique fixture.
The water crisis, which started in March and peaked during the next two summer months and early part of June, is no joke for Surigaonons who must stay as late as 2 a.m. just to fill all available water receptacles for drinking and cooking.
For resident John Rod Catoto, water has become so precious his family of three has to bathe and wash their clothes from a free-flowing underground well some 10 kilometers on the outskirts of the city.
“Whatever is flowing in the faucet, if there’s any, is stored as drinking water,” said Catoto, a 25-year-old father of one.
Water got so scarce during the past two months that not a drop came out from the faucets for three to five days. For Catoto and the rest of the local water utility’s 20,500 subscribers, that meant not only finding new sources of water but willingness to spend more by replacing traditional sources with bottled mineral water for everyday use.
Residents and public officials alike cast the blame on the 25-year-old Surigao Metropolitan Water District (SMWD) for failing to provide a long-term solution to the perennial water supply problem.
In response, the SMWD said short and medium term solutions have been put in the pipeline to improve capacity. Some of these are the construction of new deep wells and the commissioning of new water sources outside the city, according to SMWD General Manager Benjamin Ensomo.
However, Ensomo admitted that the long-term solution to address the water district’s increasing number of consumers lay in the 960-hectare Parang-Parang Watershed— the city’s only source of potable water —whose water capacity level has steadily decreased in the last decade.
In the last two months, SMWD disclosed the water level at the watershed had gone down to a “critical level” —a major factor in the unprecedented water supply interruption that locals had complained during the period.
At the heart of the problem is the decades-old problem of illegal mining at the watershed, SMWD and local officials admit.
SMWD has accused small-scale miners of illegally tapping into the water district pipelines for mining uses. Worse, small-scale miners resort to illegal logging within the watershed’s forest to secure timber required to stabilize their tunnels.
When an SMWD-led team tried to enforce a long-running cease and desist order against the illegal small-scale miners in the watershed area in 2005, it resulted in the deaths of four policemen.
Authorities have since identified the area as a flash point where armed small-scale miners are allegedly backed by communist insurgents.
Faced by mounting pressures from SMWD and law enforcement authorities, the miners grouped themselves under the Nagkahiusang Gagmay’ng Minero (Nagami) and filed for a 20-hectare Minahang Bayan application to legalize their operations.
SMWD and the local business chamber opposed the move, noting that the area sought by Nagami encroaches on the watershed’s one-kilometer buffer zone.
Nagami countered that moving away from the buffer zone would serve their “Minahang Bayan” application meaningless, noting that the “high-grade” area has always been believed to be in the disputed area.
Ensomo explained the that buffer zone— although located outside the formal boundaries covered by presidential order declaring the watershed —would ensure that mining activities would not affect the integrity of the water quality being supplied to consumers.
That position has virtually placed the provincial government in dilemma.
Governor Sol Matugas earlier supported Nagami’s application in order to bring the illegal miners’ operations under government regulation, noting that if left unregulated, the miners’ use of mercury and other accompanying illegal activities would pose more danger to the nearby water bodies and the environment.
Due to local opposition, however, the Provincial Mines and Regulatory Board (PMRB) has decided to shelve Nagami’s application.
This has effectively put everything back to standstill: Illegal small-scale miners continue their operations, thus severely affecting water capacity—and potentially, water quality as well—at the watershed even during normal wet season, and SMWD seasonally looking for short-term, band-aid solutions to appease suffering consumers.