A solution to our water crisis is at hand
It was only a week ago when the Cebu media was invited to a power lunch hosted by the Visayan Electric formerly called VECO where we also met the top officials of the newest and fifth member of the Aboitiz Group called the Aboitiz InfraCapital that I wrote about in this corner last Friday. That meeting brought in a lot of questions from the Cebu media and one important component was about the water crisis of Cebu, something that Aboitiz InfraCapital is doing in Davao City with its Apo Agua Infrastructura. It was then that I was introduced to Aboitiz InfraCapital CEO Cosette Canilao and Apo Agua CEO Roman Azanza III.
So when I got into Tsay Cheng, it was no surprise for me to find out that this event was hosted by Aboitiz InfraCapital entitled, “An Innovative Bulk Water Solution to help Metro Cebu.” Basically, yesterday’s session with Aboitiz InfraCapital focused on the so-called water crisis we are experiencing in Cebu. To be totally honest, Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) admitted that our economic growth has outpaced our water supply. So many companies have constructed commercial buildings like condominiums but where do they get their water supply? I know that Mactan Island, the newly-constructed resort hotels are trying to solve their water problems using desalination plants.
Of course, this brought in questions as to why we should desalinate water when desalination is very expensive. CEO Canilao then told us that water is also a problem in Metro Manila to a point that a Starbucks coffee shop had to close because it could no longer get water from their source. I started writing serious articles about our water problems after I interviewed my good friend, MCWD chairman Joel Mari Yu, who gave me the real score as to why we are having this water crisis.
In Manila, because of they have the Angat Dam, La Mesa Dam, Magat Dam or Ambuklao Dam, during summer when rain stops falling and water levels go down to critical levels, the public is told to conserve water and the public does what they need to do. But here in Cebu since we only have the Buhisan Dam as our surface water which only gives 8,000 cubic meters of water, the only time we panic is when the water that we get from the underground wells start to dry up, then we complain that we have a water crisis. Of course, when summer is over and we get a lot of tropical storms we no longer feel or believe we still have a water crisis.
Enter the Aboitiz InfraCapital who showed what they were doing in Davao City with CEO Azanza explaining to the group. Although they admitted that it was not a walk in the park, but at the end of the day, Davao City would no longer have a water problem like what we are having here in Cebu now. Mind you, Cebu already had a serious water crisis since the time of Governor Emilio “Lito” Osmeña.
If you can recall, Osmeña even proposed to tap water from the Inabanga River where millions of gallons of fresh water flows into the sea. The problem with his proposal was he would pipe this water from Inabanga River into Cebu through a pipe stretching from Bohol to Cebu passing through the sealanes. Today while the Inabanga River continues to move fresh water into the sea, nothing has been done to tap this rich water source.
I wrote in a column that Cebu should use water tankers the size of oil tankers to bring water from the Inabanga River, cross the Bohol Strait, and pump them into prepared locations perhaps run by MCWD, and filter the water and pump them into the homes of Cebuanos. Mind you, I wrote that suggestion long before the Tsuneishi Heavy Industries was built in Balamban. Now, this project has become a real possibility.
At this point, I’m truly glad that finally after writing about the seriousness of our water crisis, we are now getting a real, honest-to-goodness investment company that has set its sights to help Metro Cebu permanently solve this decades-long water crisis. I can only hope that Aboitiz InfraCapital gets this project so that we can finally start solving our water problems.
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