Friday, August 15, 2008 Speak Out: We told you so, 2 By Juan L. Mercado
NEWSPAPERS reported last weekend that Metro Cebu Water District (MCWD) has frantically called for help to scrounge 27,500 cubic meters of water daily to meet a spreading shortage.
The SOS came even as officials politely refuse to remind Mayor Tomas Osmeña of his tattered claim: “There is no water problem.”
No journalist likes to run a column with a head “We told you so.”
We had to do with the mushrooming yen loans of Mayor Osmeña.
We’ve banged away at emerging water shortages since 1996, saying: Water shortages could turn it into a dessicated wasteland.
Babies and migrants tripled Cebu’s population in 40 years.
They splashed, drunk and washed through 94 million cubic meters last year.
Demand will surge to 210 mcm/yr in 2030.
By then, Cebu’s population would top 4.3 million.
The gap in supply is closed by “borrowing against tomorrow.”
Like Parañaque
Metro Cebu sucks 275,000 cubic meters daily from its small aquifers – double what they can recharge.
Salt now taints a full third of its aquifers.
Water tables have plummeted to twice as deep as 10 years back.
Concern over their own shortages saw the Dumaguete mayor ban Cebu vessels from taking on water when they dock.
Boholanos bucked a proposal that draws, through a submarine cable, water from Inabanga River.
Thus, Cebu clones a Parañaque held hostage by water vendors or, as the New York Times notes, India’s emerging dustbowls in Rajastan, Haryana and Tamil Nadu.
“Indians are tapping groundwater faster than nature can replenish it, so fast they’re hitting deposits formed at the time of the dinosaurs,” the Times’ Ruth Fremson writes. “The water is almost gone.”
And so are the food, land and jobs.
Sourcing
Why then are some officials upset over a consortium proposal to pipe 40,000 cubic meters of water daily from Carmen town?
Wouldn’t that benefit a metropolis whose economy is 99 percent dependent on water “mined” from collapsing aquifers?
In cooperation with World Bank, Ayala, Stateland Equity and Viscal corporations negotiated the proposal with a strained MCWD that serves only 55 percent of residents.
Completing detailed National Economic Development Agency reviews, it’s ready for a “Swiss challenge” as provided by law.
Cebu business chambers, and mayors in the project area, backed the proposal.
Failure by city and provincial government to provide adequate water hobbled their firms.
“We don’t care where the water comes from provided we get it,” they said.
Political water
But objections suddenly erupted.
“It is a puzzlement,” as Yul Brynner said in “The King And I” film.
There’s no puzzle here.
It’s only the “political water.”
Like other places, Cebu has a glut of back-stepping leaders, who posture as if they’re moving forward.
Their objections cloak failure to devise long term solutions for a water crisis they ignored.
“I’m not against the proposal,” began Mayor Tomas Osmeña at a public hearing. With support from provincial capitol, he cited flaws.”
The price at P25 per cubic meter was prohibitive.
No new technology was involved.
Legal flaws marred the proposal.
He’d “level the playing field” for competitors by yanking out a P200 million provision to refund the consortium for development costs, if it lost a Swiss challenge.
He would sue the World Bank for “conflict of interest” since its affiliate was part of the consortium.
Dodging issues
These sound bytes play the gallery.
But it ducks tough but essential decisions: pricing water at it’s economic cost and implementing harsh penalties for waste.
Nor will bring a single drop of water to Cebu.
In fact, Osmeña’s pride – the 297 South Reclamation Project (SRP)– is water short.
Oil hovers at $70 a barrel.
Thus, the energy-intensive process of desalination will peg SRP water at P62 per cubic meter.
Potential investors are balking.
“Dry faucets can quickly turn into ugly political unrest,” the Manila Bulletin Yearbook notes.
And “agitation is a poor substitute for policy… (Falling) to reverse ecological decay, Cebuanos today prepare to pass on their unpaid ecological IOUs to the next generation – as their fathers did before them.”
Problem
Dodging issues is an old game.
In 1995, then governor Pablo Garcia predicted: “By 1998, Cebu will be swamped in excess water. If need be, we’ll lease supertankers to bring water from Ormoc.”
Today, one out of four drinks polluted wells in Cebu, locking towns into recurring gastro outbreaks, says the UN Human Development Report.
It’s on par with Senegal and Krygstan.
Garcia’s successor and daughter, the well-meaning Gov. Gwendolyn, must untangle problems dear old dad left.
In Metro Cebu, industries are saddled with hefty extra water bills.
Like Indonesia’s betchak drivers, Cebu slum dwellers pay ambulant peddlers over thrice the cost of piped water.
“We pay more for our cholera,” says a nun who works with the poor.
For years, Osmeña scoffed at the water issue.
He ignored studies that tracked, since 1972, relentless salt intrusion into inland aquifers.
His inaugural address focused on “major issues,” i.e. legalizing cockfights and taxes.
Osmeña and Garcia, in 1997, dismissed complaints of falsified watershed maps.
Ricardo Cardinal Vidal and businessmen got then president Ramos to issue Proclamation 1017, to safeguard the watersheds.
Leaders’ fault
Snickers caused Osmeña to drop his plan that tropical denuded Cebu clone the semi-temperate model of Lake Arrowhead in the US.
He rejected a water master plan prepared, with Dutch government support.
“Ayala has done more for Cebu than many other entities,” Sun.Star editor Pachico Seares wrote. “(Tomas Osmeña) has said a lot more than others about defending the city.”
All eight Millennium Development goals have “one factor in common: water.”
Asian Development Bank president Haruhiko Kuroda told a conference to reverse the slump in financing for water.
India and the Philippines will miss the 2015 target for having the proportion of people that lack clean water.
