ILLEGALLY tapped water connections remain the biggest problem of the Baguio Water District (BWD).
BWD general manager Engineer Salvador Royeca said BWD is losing at least 26 percent of the game due to illegal activities.
To address the problem, BWD has adopted a district metering area where it could measure the volume of water being delivered to consumers as well as to eliminate illegal connections mostly committed by gardeners where they tap their connections from the water sources of BWD for their gardens.
Royeca said they have coordinated with the police to continue monitoring different illegal connections adding their office is willing to give discounts to farmers who are illegally connecting from water sources just to stop illegal tapping.
BWD has also started to intensify leak detection and repair of their connections as well as eliminations of overflowing tanks and will conduct massive water meter calibration and replacements of defective water meters.
Royeca added there is an increasing demand of water in the city servicing 35,876 residential houses, 4,361 commercial establishments, 322 government offices, 2 wholesale and 2 metered deep well.
BWD services all barangays in the city except Kias, Fort Del Pilar, Camp John Hay, Apugan Loakan, Atok Trail, Lucnab and Happy Hallow since they have their own water sources. BWD also serves parts of Tuba and Itogon municipalities.
To help solve the problem of high demand, BWD has proposed a rain harvesting facility at Busol Watershed costing around P139 million, Rehabilitation of the Sto. Tomas Rain Basin in Tuba amounting to P92 million, and improvement of BWD water system subsystem 5 and 6 amounting to P112 million.
BWD has also appealed to the public to help address effects of climate change by helping manage forests and watersheds, tree planting activities, and assist forest fire fighting and prevention activities.
The water utility will also excavate ditches at watershed to maximize groundwater infiltration and will establish rain water harvesting.
BWD will also implement the continued fencing in Busol Watershed to prevent encroachment of informal settler.