Potable

We are now into that part of the year when our water supply runs thin. In the Mega Manila area, this means that the vital commodity will be rationed, principally by lowering water pressure.

I live on the fourth floor of a walk-up apartment. When water pressure is reduced, my faucets run dry. I wait until everyone else is asleep to get water and store it.

This is not the most troubling part.

The Mega Manila area (NCR and contiguous provinces) is dependent on Angat Dam for 96 percent of its fresh water supply. Should something truly calamitous happen to that dam, the most densely populated area of the country will become a wasteland.

A week ago, water for irrigation from Angat was drastically reduced to conserve supply. This is not new. It happens every year when impounded water levels begin to fall.

The standing government plan is to use diverted water from the Kaliwa River to supplement Mega Manila’s supply. At present, fresh water from that river flows unimpeded to the Pacific Ocean.

That plan has been funded but there is strong opposition to it from an assortment of environmental and indigenous people groups. The more progress there is in building that dam, the sharper the political confrontation.

Some fundamentalist groups would rather save the trees than save a megalopolis that creates well over half the country’s GDP. We might as well all return to the caves.

Right now, the only supplemental fresh water we get to break near-absolute dependence on Angat Dam is processed from Laguna de Bay. Even that is threatened.

Laguna de Bay is neither a lagoon nor a bay, despite its name. It is a lake named after the once-important town of Bay in Laguna province.

Sometimes it seems we are never really sure what this body of water is. During the dry months, its waters recede, leading to inflow from Manila Bay. The inflow raises the salinity of the lake – which fishermen prefer because it is better for breeding fish.

But we also need to make Laguna de Bay a fresh water lake to supply Mega Manila’s needs. The fishers do not want that. That is a political flashpoint right there.

Manila Bay, we know, is one of the most toxic in the world. It is fed by about 22 highly polluted waterways flowing through the most congested urban sprawl in the world. It is not safe to swim in Manila Bay. It never will be during our lifetime.

The water that flows from Manila Bay to Laguna de Bay is, needless to say, not clean.

This small fact might not even matter. Laguna de Bay is quickly becoming a cesspool, accepting waste of all the towns and cities surrounding it. Six provinces and some 60 municipalities surround the lake. Its watershed area extends deep into Quezon, Laguna, Rizal and Cavite. All these areas are threatened by overpopulation.

About 21 major rivers, increasingly polluted, flow into the lake. Only the Napindan Channel along the Pasig River drains water from the lake to the bay. This is the reason why the 28 lakeshore towns flood during the wet season.

Water in this lake hardly moves, choked by the sprawling fish pens built over many years while regulators looked the other way. The pens trap trash and make the lake shallower by the day. But no one ever found the political will to demolish them.

The Macapagal-Arroyo government had a brilliant plan to deal with the mounting problems in the lake. They negotiated ODA to build a ring road around the lake. The project would involve dredging the lake, using the material to build the road. The ring road would help relieve traffic flow as well a help manage waste disposal into the lake.

President Noynoy Aquino did not like the project and abruptly cancelled it. The Belgian firm contracted to undertake the project went to international arbitration. The Philippine government lost and must now pay reparations. All the while, the silt accumulates at the bottom of the lake.

Water concessionaire Maynilad started tapping water from the lake in 2010 to supplement Mega Manila’s water supply. The company now has two operating water treatment plants in the lake and is in the process of building a third.

Manila Water started tapping water from Laguna de Bay in 2019. Both concessionaires observe that water quality in the lake is going from bad to worse. Left unattended, the lake could become unusable as a raw water source.

As it is, excess fish feed, household waste and toxic industrial chemicals have leached into the lake’s bottom. Algal blooms indicate the increasing toxicity of the waters. The lake must be dredged at some point, says Laguna Lake Development Authority GM Jaime Medina. But to do so, the fish pens must be demolished.

Recently, Rep. Ruffy Biazon filed House Bill 737 calling for enhanced protection of Laguna Lake. The proposed law will introduce mechanisms to ensure water quality at the lake will be maintained for it to become a source of potable water.

This much-needed bill will have to go through murky political waters. It is uncertain if it will survive the gauntlet of vested interests that profit from degrading the lake’s water quality. Both fish pen owners and small fishermen will certainly oppose it. They prefer a cesspool to a fresh water source.

If Laguna de Bay dies, our myopic and parochial politics will have murdered it.