There is no question that the Cebu Provincial Board, Mandaue City Council, and the Cebu City Council who compose Mega Cebu are dissatisfied with the performance of the Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) to the point that the Provincial Board is looking at the possibility of suing it. But I have to agree with MCWD chairman Joel Mari Yu that the “poor service” cannot be blamed on the MCWD Board which only has a limited tenure of office.
When I read this report, the first issue that came into my head is “will filing charges against the MCWD Board result in improved services and bring more water into our nearly dried-up system? I don’t think so! As we know, our water crisis can be traced to the reality that our politicians never went out of their way to solve our water problems.
It’s time to ask ourselves why many illegal settlers live in the three- or five-meter easement along our riverbanks. Or perhaps the better question to ask is why doesn’t the Office of the Building Official demolish illegal structures in areas where no buildings or homes are supposed to be built? The answer is simple; because the people living in those areas vote for our politicos, so they can live there as long as they like.
Of course, the consequence of this inaction is that the illegal settlers turn our rivers or esteros into their personal dumping site and clog our rivers and esteros. Their trash reaches the sea and fish eat their garbage, thus it is unhealthy for us to eat fish caught in the Bohol Strait.
The same is true for Mandaue City, which years ago didn’t even have a single hotel or restaurant, and Mandaue didn’t even have anything that resembled Colon Street. But after the Mandaue Reclamation Area was completed, new buildings were constructed and today there is the Bai Hotel, Maayo Hotel, and Jpark Hotel, and these edifices aren’t even five years old. So I dare you to ask yourselves where these buildings get water. I have been writing on water issues for a long time now, but people merely look at my articles as just another column and don’t realize they were warnings to our public officials to start finding other water sources. But now that there really is a serious lack of water, our politicians find the need to sue MCWD just to look for people to blame for this problem.
Some people wrongly believe that our water problem stems from our unprecedented growth and blame the Catholic Church for not imposing any birth control measures. But this so-called overpopulation did not just happen in a few short years, but rather it happened in generations. At this point, it is high time for us to really look for solutions to our water crisis and find ways to solve them. One such problem is for us to create a Mananga High Dam or the Lusaran High Dam. This has been an issue in Cebu for more than 30 years now and no one came up with ways to solve this problem or go into a more expensive desalination process.
Mega Cebu should meet in a huge meeting and decide the best way for us to resolve our water crisis. Why Mega Cebu? I can only second guess that this time Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella would now join Mega Cebu when his predecessor refused. With Cebu City joining Mega Cebu, it would mean that today we can have some kind of united front in combating our water crisis or traffic problems. Call it a water summit if you want, but it is high time for Metro Cebu together with MCWD to get the full picture of what truly ails our water systems.
For instance, do we know that the saltwater intrusion has now reached the Capitol Building? Just 20 years ago, saltwater intrusion was already along Mango Avenue But since no one did anything, and the Province of Cebu sold the old 50-hectare Club Filipino golf course and later the old Lahug airport was turned into a cement jungle, rainwater to replenish the aquifer has stopped, but since we did not stop extracting water from our underground wells, it worsened the saltwater intrusion! So who should we blame for this water crisis?