Bontoc, Palayan villages reeling from water lack

BAGUIO CITY—The Mt. Province capital, Bontoc, is suffering from a water crisis that was traced to a worn-out piping system that serves its most populated villages, Mayor Franklin Odsey said.

The plastic pipes buried underground have burst, leaving the villages of Poblacion, Caluttit, Bontoc Ili and Samoki there without water in the last two weeks.

Last week, the municipal council declared a state of calamity in Bontoc and allocated P800,000 of the town’s calamity funds to replace the plastic pipes with iron ones.

The pipes channel water from various sources in Talubin village to a central distribution tank in Poblacion.

“Laid out in 1992, the durability of the plastic pipes already weakened, causing the pipes to burst,” Odsey said in a statement.

It took  Bontoc Waterworks Unit  two weeks to uncover and repair the leaking pipes, the statement said, after some of the replacement pipes burst due to the water pressure and had to be repaired again.

Water has been restored to  some households, but the Bontoc government has started rehabilitating its whole water system.

Odsey said the rehabilitation project would be completed by the end of the year.

In Nueva Ecija province, five villages of Palayan City have also been relying on rationed water after the communities’ shallow wells dried up due to severe heat.

Water from Palayan City Water District is being delivered to the villages of Manggahan, Pinaltakan, Aulo, Singalat and Imelda by a tanker provided by the family of Mayor Adrianne Mae Cuevas.

Cuevas had activated a multiagency task force to develop new water sources for these communities and to improve irrigation services. Reports from Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon, and Armand Galang, Inquirer Central Luzon