Maynilad mulls Putatan 4 amid Kaliwa delay

Manila, Phillipines — West Zone concessionaire Maynilad Services Inc. is now studying the possibility of a fourth Putatan plant if government will continue to face delay in building the flagship Kaliwa Dam.

Maynilad president and chief executive officer Ramoncito Fernandez said the water firm might consider a Putatan 4, which would also tap the waters from Laguna Lake.

“We had an agreement with MWSS (Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System) that if we feel that Kaliwa is being delayed, we will proactively promote another water plant,” Fernandez told reporters on the sidelines of the CAMANA facility groundbreaking on Monday.

“By 2021, if we see nothing is happening, we have to make our move because as you’ve seen, it’s been more than 15 years since plans for the Kaliwa Dam,” he said.

The new Putatan plant will likely cost between P8 billion and P10 billion per 150 million liters per day.

“But we would rather get approval for 300 MLD immediately because the problem if you do it gradually, like 150 and another 150, it will be more expensive and there is no economies of scale,” Fernandez said.

For the third Putatan plant, Maynilad will begin construction by January and will take two years to complete. The facility will have a capacity of 150 MLD.

Maynilad’s Putatan treatment plant in Muntinlupa is the first water treatment facility that taps into Laguna Lake as an alternative to Angat Dam and is the largest membrane-based water treatment plant in the Philippines and is also the first of its kind in the country to use large-scale microfiltration and reverse osmosis.

Maynilad has welcomed the call of MWSS to prioritize the domestic use of water in the Laguna Lake.

Maynilad is pouring in P100 billion over the next five years to accelerate the improvement and expansion of its water infrastructure projects to enhance supply and pressure.

The West Zone concessionaire has broken ground on the P10.5-billion Camana (Caloocan-Malabon-Navotas) water reclamation facility.

The new plant which will take two years to construct, will help clean up waterways flowing to Manila Bay and improve sanitation conditions in three cities.

“This project is really for the environment. This will catch all of the wastewater of domestic customers inside the three cities and then pump them to these stations and clean the wastewater before throwing it back to the river systems,“ said Maynilad president Ramoncito Fernandez.

The STP will treat wastewater generated by some 1.2 million Maynilad customers in South Caloocan, Malabon, and Navotas.

Once completed, it will become Maynilad’s largest STP in terms of capacity, capable of treating about 205 million liters of wastewater per day. The facility will increase Maynilad’s sewerage coverage to 47 percent, up from only six percent in 2007 before the firm was reprivatized.

The company is currently constructing other sewerage treatment plants in Valenzuela, Las Pinas City, and Tunasan and Cupang in Muntinlupa.

This year alone, Maynilad is spending P17 billion, higher than the P10 billion it invested in 2018.

Maynilad is the largest private water concessionaire in the country in terms of customer base. It serves the areas of Caloocan, Pasay, Parañaque, Las Piñas, Muntinlupa, Valenzuela, Navotas, Malabon, and certain portions of Manila, Quezon City, Makati and Cavite.