Mercado: Facts as tutor

Saturday, September 10, 2011

“FACTS are facts,” Indian statesman Jawharlal Nehru wrote. “They’ll not disappear on account of your likes.” Compare the facts on two water-stressed cities: Cebu and Singapore. Are you set for a jolt?

Singapore and Cebu have limited water resources. Both lack watersheds and have limited underground aquifers. Average rainfall of 2,400 mm per year is their only internal fresh water resource. So, is a crippling lack of water inevitable? The outcomes depend, on how each city reacts.

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Singapore implemented a “Four Taps strategy.” The policy included: rain harvesting, water purchase contracts, desalination and recycling of waste water.

For three terms, former mayor Tomas Osmeña insisted: Cebu didn’t have a water problem.

He shelved a 30-year master plan, drafted by Dutch specialists, after The Hague rejected his demand to control project funds. He, instead, hired an 80-year-old water diviner: Soledad Legaspi.

Singapore harvests every raindrop. Approximately 60 percent of Singapore is a catchment that channels rainwater into 14 reservoirs. A third (roughly 33 percent) of water used by Changi Airport comes from rainwater. Rainwater collection systems, on the roofs of 49,000 Singapore residential flats, sprawled over 742 hectares, halved the water bills of families.

Every raindrop that sloshes into Mactan Cebu International Airport cascades into the Mactan Channel. Rainwater Collection and Springs Development Act (Republic Act 6715) has been in the books for 22 years now. But even the P132-million city legislative building has no rainwater collection system. Not one of Cebu’s barangays has a
rainwater collection pond.

Three Singapore plants recycle close to 90 million liters of waste water daily. This recycled water is put back in fresh water reservoirs, treated further and pumped back to the city. Cebu does not recycle a single drop.

Desalination is energy-intensive. With oil prices at record highs, Cebu cannot afford this process. But this year, desalination will provide Singapore 400 million liters of water per day. That’s about a third of its daily needs.

Singapore buys 40 percent of its water from Malaysia. A contract will be renewed this year, the other contract in 2061. Despite occasional tiffs, Malaysia never closed off the taps. Nonetheless, Singapore signed an agreement with nextdoor Indonesia to purchase water.

The most desiccated of 136 cities, Cebu must tap surface water outside city limits or wither. It already siphons over double what its crumbling underground reservoirs recharge. Babies and migrants tripled demand. Water tables have slumped. All city rivers are biologically dead.

Yet, Osmeña torpedoed a World Bank-backed proposal by Ayala and other investors to tap surface water from Carmen’s Luyang river. Worse, he did not propose alternatives.

All homes in Singapore have water service 24 hours a day. Service is 100 percent metered. Water loss is 6 percent, similar to Phnom Penh after reforms staunched a 72% percent leakage. Last time we looked, about 38 percent of water in Cebu leaked away or was pilfered.

A squatter’s shack here will pay 13 times for the same water that a home in gated Maria Luisa enclave gets, UN World Water Development Report states. “We pay more for our gastro-enteritis,” said a nun who serves slum indigents.

That is why facts can be a superb tutor. “Whiskey is for drinkin’,” Mark Twain once cracked. “But water is for fightin’ over.”

(juanlmercado@gmail.com)