THE Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) yesterday announced the successive heavy rains in Cebu in the past days increased water supply from its Jaclupan, Talisay City wells from a low of 10,000 to 16,000 cubic meters per day.
MCWD General Manager Ernie Delco said that although 16,000 cubic meters is far from the average of 33,000 cubic meters of water production daily, the increase is very much welcome as it was able to stretch household supply time by an hour or so.
“We had some isolated power problem yesterday and today, these are just temporary,” Delco said.
The power outages in MCWD’s franchise area that will last for a week are due to the improvements of power lines and posts of the Visayan Electric Co. (Veco) to improve services.
So far, Delco said they checked Talisay City and Barangay Sambag 2 and Sitio Banawa in Cebu City, which were affected by low water supply in the past months and observed improved water service.
He said there is now a streamflow in the Mananga River and some of the water has been diverted by the weir into the facility, hence the increased volume.
A 5,000-cubic meter per day supply is good for around the same number of households.
Last May 23, around 200 MCWD employees volunteered to help scrape the dried silt from the four-hectare Jaclupan infiltration basin to prepare the facility in case there is rainfall.
The successive rainfall came in the past days because of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) or series of west low pressure areas, said Director Oscar Tabada of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) Visayas.
However, Tabada said that despite the latest rainfall, El Niño will last until the first quarter of 2016 and could worsen in October and November 2015.
MCWD has 165,000 customers within its franchise area in the cities of Talisay, Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu and the Municipalities of Minglanilla, Consolacion, Cordova, Liloan and Compostela. It needs to produce 217,000 cubic meters daily.
Delco said that had it not been for the 24,000 cubic meters supply contract from Carmen, Cebu, MCWD would have resorted to water rationing by now.