Scarcity of water and flashfloods

The early days of the COVID-19 infection also saw water shortage being felt in Metropolitan Cebu. Two calamities bearing down on a community. Their actions already gravely hampered by quarantine directives, mayors Jonas Cortes, Samsam Gullas, and Edgardo Labella, (they are alphabetically arranged), to respond to that problem, dispatched water tankers to areas in their respective jurisdictions critically in need of water. We doffed our hats to the mayors for their action for, indeed, it somehow brought relief to distressed areas.

 To more serious observers though, the move of the mayors highlighted the bigger problem of an increasing short supply of water. Bluntly speaking, we Cebuanos will, sooner rather than later, have less available water to drink. Incidentally, this alarm was raised by no less than then Senator Sonny Osmeña, in a public forum he held at the Sacred Heart Center which I attended about three decades ago! He cited that brackish water was seeping into Cebu City’s underground faster than imagined. I remember him proposing measures to arrest the looming crises but, quite sadly, I have not seen any of his suggestions seriously acted upon.

Few days ago, flash floods rampaged through the city. After inflicting heavy damage to property and causing loss of lives, even in areas not known for being inundated in the past, the huge volume of water just flowed to the sea. If we just pause for a while and think of that most recent disaster, we come to grip the contrasting extremes of acute water shortage on one hand and rampaging floods on the other hand. If we do ruminate, we find a common denominator in water. We have the problem of diminishing water supply and a yet, ironically, we can take the heavy rains resulting in floods as a probable solution.

The solution that I most respectfully suggest to our officials is to consider adopting plans to impound rainwater in huge catchments. I believe that our experts can identify places higher in elevation than the city proper where to arrest the waters from rushing down. They can also pinpoint along the stretches of upland rivers and natural waterways where dams or huge tanks can be built to store water. For example, they can copy a Singapore model. That City of the Lion, Singhapura, has its underground reservoir where rain water is saved rather than allowed to drain to the sea. Another example. In many American cities, they have “sunken gardens” which are actually places within the cities that are designed to contain water in times of heavy rains. Water from higher elevation is canalized, in a rather aesthetic manner, and “sunk” to these “gardens”.

Financing such colossal projects is very daunting. It will bear surely much on the fiscal capacity of the city. Funding will therefore possibly be the most serious argument against undertaking these infrastructure projects. But, did not Cebu City make an initial budget of over a billion pesos to fight COVID-19? Any attempt to compare the expected cost of dams and reservoirs against the health needs from the coronavirus pales in the terrible damage inflicted by the floods of no more than two hours that happened few weeks ago.

In any case, I trust in the collective will of our leaders. They can always find out that in building these dams and reservoirs, they prevent future floods and more importantly, solve the scarcity of water supply.