The weather bureau is saying El Niño will start within two or three months. But for many of us, it seems the long and hot season is here already. People are learning about heat index and how our skins are feeling what seems like temperature way above fever level.
They also warned that the climate event, El Niño, could bring the water in the dams to critical levels, particularly in the last quarter of this year until the first half of 2024. As early as now, we were warned, the water levels of the dams are already dropping. The water level of Angat Dam has started to drop and Metro Manila is about 98 percent dependent on Angat for water supply.
We should start preparing for what could be a catastrophic event for our mostly poor population. Even in the best of times, our poor are deprived of a good supply of running water. The unfairness inherent in our society means they will lose even the occasional drips of water they painstakingly collect to drink, cook, bathe, and otherwise live their difficult lives.
MWSS deputy administrator Jose Dorado Jr. has urged Metro Manila mayors to pass ordinances regulating the use of water by golf courses, car wash, and swimming pools to address the dwindling water level in Angat Dam. He said there are at least 10 golf courses operating in Metro Manila, including four serviced by Maynilad Water Services Inc. The rest are served by Manila Water.
It is difficult to get the 17 mayors of Metro Manila to agree to do something that needs to be done. A national government agency like the MWSS must take the initiative to carry out its responsibility to avert a crisis.
MWSS must have enough powers to make everyone conserve water while we still have water to conserve. MWSS should be able to physically curtail the amount of water being supplied to the golf courses, as well as by increasing the rate to be charged for such non critical use of water.
The MWSS official is on the right track. I was in California a few years ago when they had a bad dry spell. Homeowners could be penalized for watering their lawns or washing their cars. Golf courses had their water supply curtailed as well.
Social justice demands that before our government rations water supply for all Metro Manilans, it should have completely cut off water supply to golf courses for at least a month before. In a water crisis, non-critical users of water should not get a single drop from our scarce supply.
Actually, the golf courses should have long ago planned to deal with this. It is simply stupid and wasteful and, and in a crisis, criminal as well, to water their greens with chlorine-treated drinkable water. They should have made arrangements to take in “gray water” or water from the sanitary treatment plants or STPs of condos, buildings,and even factories around them, or even from the Pasig River for watering all that grass.
Tong Padilla of Rockwell Land was telling me that in all Rockwell developments, they use “gray water” for watering the plants and washing cars even now. I am not sure if other property developers are doing the same thing. They may have excess “gray water” to sell to Manila Golf and the other golf courses. I understand that Wack Wack is using their lagoon for watering their greens and that’s “gray water” from their STP.
Manila Golf, where a share costs in the vicinity of P100 million each, should set the example in responsible golf course management. The Manila Polo Club will also have the same problem keeping their polo grounds green. The barangays at Forbes, Dasmariñas, and others where swimming pools are common should also have rules on water use.
The MWSS Board should have the power to set the water rates high enough for use in volumes beyond what is necessary for household purposes. Golf courses and rich households with swimming pools should be given a good reason to minimize their water use through higher water bills.
Or maybe, the newly created Water Resources Management Office under DENR should “avert a water crisis” by harnessing all the powers of government to make sure what little available water we now have is equitably distributed to primarily support every human being’s need to have water for basic daily needs.
The United Nations reports it will require 2.5 billion gallons of water each day to sustain the world’s 4.7 billion people. Today, the cumulative amount of water used to irrigate the world’s golf courses is just that: 2.5 billion gallons every day. Audubon International estimates that the average American course uses 312,000 gallons per day. In a place like Palm Springs, each golf course each day consumes as much water as an American family of four uses in four years.
It isn’t as if the managers of our golf courses didn’t know this problem was coming. Golf Digest devoted a candid article to the subject, in which the magazine states very frankly: “Golf will face a crisis over water.”
In some areas in the US, the United States Golf Association has made it mandatory for as many as 1,000 courses to use recycled or reclaimed water. New grasses are being developed that require less moisture to thrive. Courses are being returned more to their natural state, so grass will often have to lose some of its sheen. As the Golf Digest puts it, “at the end of the day, for golf to go green and accommodate itself to the real world, it’s simply going to have to be much more brown.”
It can be done by relying more and more on technological advances like soil moisture meters, which measure moisture in the soil at various spots on the golf course. Soil wetting agents, which draw water from the surface down to the roots of grass plants, also help courses cut back on water use.
Water is life and the government must guarantee our right to have the water we need to live. Wasteful and non-critical use of water must be stopped.
Boo Chanco’s email address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco