Mercado: Rain as grace

Saturday, September 3, 2011

“A MAN will fight over three things,” Sen. Barry Goldwater wrote. “Water, women and gold--in that order.” That sequence resonates in House of Representatives’ Resolution No. 1573.

Filed by party-list legislator Rep. Arnel Ty, it urges government: Revisit its failure to implement the 22-year old law titled: “Rainwater Collection and Springs Development Act.” Approved in March 1989, RA 6715 requires rainwater be saved.

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All administrations flopped in implementing this law. Less than one percent of local governments set up cisterns, Magsaysay Awardee Antonio Oposa found. “The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept,” Shakespeare wrote.

“Issue a “writ of kalikasan,” Oposa urged the Supreme Court. That’d compel Cebu and other LGUs to save rainwater. Here, 66 out of every 100 lack safe water. Many die from tainted water. “The most fractured human right is that of a child to celebrate his first birthday.” These preventable deaths are an obscenity.

Unsaved rain often turns into rampaging floods. And during droughts people will murder for wells. Remember 200,000 died in South Sudan’s Darfur massacre, sparked by prolonged dry spells, the UN Secretary General said.

Weather change results in intense cloudbursts, half of the year, that alternate with searing droughts in the other half. In 19 provinces, floods trigger landslides in heat-seared fields, warns a Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) study. Vulnerable areas range from 90 percent in Misamis Occidental to 67 percent in North Cotabato and Sulu.

Water use is increasing at twice the rate of population growth. But 58 percent of our groundwater is contaminated, Asian Development Bank finds. Untreated domestic and industrial wastes poison reservoirs. All of Cebu’s rivers are cesspools.

Yet, solutions are doable. Take building a rain cistern. Or just sealing leaks in water system pipes. Capiz province used a Canadian grant to build 500 rainwater storage tanks. In Eastern Visayas, 26 public schools--from San Antonio in Palo, Leyte to San Joaquin Elementary in Calbayog-–are conserving rainwater. Parched Cebu and Davao City have rain saving ordinances. Iloilo drafted a similar measure.

“Between saying and doing many a pair of shoes is worn out,” an Italian proverb says. Implementation has been flabby. And there is a little recognized hurdle: Water districts which do not think beyond their backyards.

Take Bulacan’s Water District. Like Cebu, it is bugged by more deep wells that spew brackish water, as the saline edge contaminates underground aquifers. Both are over-dependent on aquifers ground water--which is not sustainable. Rainwater use would result in savings for family budgets--but a drop in water district revenue.

“At first, Bulacan was excited about harvesting rainwater,” recalls a water specialist. “What about income to pay off loans?”

finance people asked. “And that was the end of the planning." Mayor Ed Hagedorn wanted rainwater harvesting for Puerto Princesa. He, too, ran into a similar roadblock.”

Metro Cebu Water District serves less than half of city residents. Naga, Carcar and Bogo, along with 13 unqualified towns that became cities thru a flip-flopping Supreme Court decision, won’t use their Internal Revenue Allotment for water.

Mindsets must be overhauled to recognize rain as a primary source of water. What keeps rivers flowing and stores water in catchments or watersheds is rain. “Rain is the sky condescending to the earth,” John Updike wrote. “Rain is grace.”

(juanlmercado@gmail.com)