Zambo starts water rationing as dam level falls, rivers dry up

ZAMBOANGA CITY—One of the most adverse effects of the El Niño weather phenomenon is starting to make itself felt here, forcing the city’s main water supplier to resort to rationing.

The Zamboanga City Water District (ZCWD) said it is now implementing a 12-hour rationing scheme as the El Niño phenomenon, which has been projected to get worse this year, is rapidly draining its main water sources.

Leonardo Ray Vasquez, ZCWD general manager, said at least half of the city’s 98 villages will be waterless for half a day on a daily basis because of the rationing scheme, which started on Friday.

This means that at least half of the city’s 72,000 water consumers will not have a full day’s supply of water until the situation returns to normal.

“The El Niño is draining our rivers so fast,” he said.

Vasquez said ZCWD relies mainly on river water, particularly from the Pasonanca River, to provide drinking water to its consumers here.

“The water district gets water from the river,” said Vasquez. “We clean, we treat (the water drawn from the river) and give it to our people. The problem now is our rivers are drying up and all we get is seepage water,” he said.

Precarious

He said based on the ZCWD’s latest monitoring, the water level at the ZCWD’s Pasonanca River dam has gone down to as low as 71.10 meters. The ZCWD, he said, has set a normal operating level of at least 74.20 meters.

“As the water level went down to 71.10 meters, it has become very critical so we need to impose water rationing,” Vasquez said.

He said while the city continues to experience light rains amid El Niño, the water that these produce is barely enough to fill the dam.

Maribel Enriquez, chief meteorologist at the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration station here, said the current dry spell is similar to that experienced in 1995, 1997 and 1998.

“There will be no rainfall for about four months,” Enriquez said.

She said in November 2015, the city was supposed to experience 120.6 millimeters of rainfall under normal weather conditions.

“But we only recorded 66.4 mm. In December 2015, the rainfall volume based on normal conditions was supposed to be 66.8 mm but the actual rainfall volume monitored was just 7.9 mm,” Enriquez said.

 ‘Alarming’

This month, she said the rainfall volume was supposed to be 49.7 mm but by all indications, it could not be more than 1 mm.

“It’s very alarming and we see more dry days especially in February,” Enriquez said.

In North Cotabato province, the dry spell also continues to devastate farmlands as water sources there had been drying up, too.

Eliseo Mangliwan, North Cotabato provincial agriculturist, said with the lack of rain, farmers have been urged not to rely too much on irrigation systems and water their plants manually to prevent their crops from dying.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza said the provincial government had already set aside funds for cloud-seeding operations should things become worse.

She said at least 100 cloud-seeding sorties, which she said she hoped would help farmers survive the El Niño, would be conducted.