Camarines water district to tap Sipocot River

A new, innovative method of tapping rivers for potable water supply will be tried with the implementation next week of an P11-million foreign-assisted water supply improvement project in Sipocot, Camarines Sur intended to meet the long-term needs of domestic and commercial water concessionaires in that Bicol municipality.

Administrator Lorenzo Jamora of the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) said the project, which will be funded by a loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) through LWUA, will be implemented by the Sipocot Water District (SWD).

The project will tap the wide Sipocot River as a water source, employing a novel approach in water catchment and treatment, which is both cheaper and causing least disturbance to the river’s natural appearance and flow, Jamora said.

Instead of the conventional way of constructing structures directly in the river such as dam and sand filters to catch the water and rid it of impurities and sediments that both usually entail the altering of the river’s natural appearance and flow, Jamora said the SWD, through a private contractor that won a public bidding for the project, has come up with a design that will achieve the same purposes at lesser cost and least disturbance to the river itself.

Engineer Edwin Saldivar, SWD general manager, said that per the novel design, a concrete water storage unit with 100 cubic meter capacity will be constructed on the riverbank at a depth approximating the river’s lowest water level.

The project will also have a projecting solid catchment and filter shaft to allow the entry of water into the storage unit, aided by the suctioning effect of a submersible pump fitted inside the same unit to drive drawn and stored water up to a multi-media filter facility.

Saldivar said the multi-media filter facility will be constructed on an elevated area near the highway along the southern side of the Sipocot Bridge and will be equipped with pumps to drive the treated water up an existing elevated concrete ground reservoir for distribution by gravity to the water district’s concessionaires.

Saldivar said the project will benefit the water district’s more than 2,400 household and commercial connectors and provide for the needs of an additional 2,000 connectors up to the next 10 years, at least.

The SWD was named outstanding water district in the average water district category in the Bicol-Visayas area and nationwide during the LWUA-Water District National Forum held at the Manila Hotel last March.