Manila’s 2nd water-related disaster
BEN KRITZ
AT about 8:30 Monday evening, nearly 10 million people in and around Metro Manila — customers of water distributors Maynilad and Prime Water — suddenly found themselves with dry taps, an extremely unpleasant irony following several days of torrential rains and flooding.
The sudden loss of water supply was due to “turbidity” (i.e., excessive sediment) of water coming from the Ipo reservoir to the La Mesa water treatment facility. The filtration equipment was unable to handle it, and so Maynilad essentially stopped water distribution. Prime Water, which is now responsible for water supplies in much of Bulacan, did the same for its customers whose water is sourced from the Angat River.
No one knew that, however, until Maynilad issued a public advisory at about 9:30 Tuesday morning, 13 hours after the outage started. The advisory indicated that the supply suspension would be from 6 am Tuesday “until further notice,” and would affect some areas of Caloocan, Malabon, Quezon City, Makati, Pasay, and Manila. By that time, of course, affected customers had already spent a waterless night, and the area affected was much larger than Maynilad was admitting, stretching all the way the Metro from North Caloocan to Cavite.
Maynilad eventually provided an honest update of the affected portion of its service area – basically, all of it – later in the day on Tuesday. But for Bulacan customers whose local water districts have been surreptitiously hijacked by Villar-led Prime Water in recent months, no information at all was made available, even after the fact.
As of this writing (Wednesday morning), a few Maynilad customers had their water service restored, but Prime Water customers have now been without water for 36 hours, except for a brief, hour-long period of supply at very low pressure — enough to perhaps clean dirty dishes that have piled up and fill a pail or two, but little more.
The massive water service interruption highlights three glaring issues. The most obvious one is the atrocious customer service practices of the water suppliers and to a lesser, but no less annoying extent, the government regulators who are ultimately responsible for seeing that citizens are supplied with potable water, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) in the case of Maynilad, and the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) in the case of Prime Water and its “partner” water districts.
When an issue that will affect normal service arises, it shouldn’t be too much to ask, in this age of constantly connected populations, that the service provider inform its customers immediately by easily accessible channels.
The nature and actual extent of the problem should be clearly stated, and — since it’s really the only thing affected customers want to know — an estimate of when service will be restored should be provided.
Both Maynilad and Prime Water should be penalized by their respective regulators for not having provided that information. Exercising basic human courtesy towards customers, however, is apparently not part of the compliance requirements for water suppliers. That is an oversight the MWSS and LWUA must address immediately. In the interest of fairness, it should be noted that the MWSS has promised to shed some more light on the issue when an official who can speak on the record is available to do so. Stay tuned for the forthcoming update.
The second issue the massive water shortage highlights is the extremely tenuous water supply situation for the metropolis and the surrounding provinces. The Angat-Ipo-La Mesa complex is the source of about 90 percent of Metro Manila’s fresh water, provides much of the water supply for the surrounding provinces, and is a source of irrigation water for farms as far away as Pampanga. The system is about half a century old and is hopelessly outdated and overworked, so even relatively routine weather events like the monsoon storms of the past week can wreak considerable havoc.
By the same token, MWSS and its concessionaires can’t plead ignorance of the state of water supplied to the distribution system. The fact that the filtration facilities were overwhelmed by “turbid” water is not an example of an extreme weather impact, but rather an exposure of the water suppliers’ failure to maintain adequate infrastructure.
Some of the pressure will be relieved in the years to come when (or if) the New Centennial Water Source-Kaliwa Dam Project is completed, because it will provide water supplies from a different watershed. That project will take years, however, and in the meantime the Bulacan Bulk Water Project, which will be completed in two to three years, will simply add to the stress on the Angat River system, meaning episodes like the latest water shortage may become even more frequent.
The third issue the latest water crisis highlights is how the monopoly power granted to private water concessionaires actually results in degraded utility services for consumers. As a condition for connecting neighborhoods to their water systems, the private concessionaires are able to demand that small local water distribution facilities — village water systems, communal deep wells, and water delivery services — be removed so that they may capture as many customers as possible within their franchise areas. Since the water systems provided by the concessionaires are objectively better than the older local systems, this is not usually a problem – until disaster strikes, and the affected consumers are left with no backup options.
That leaves a clear choice for regulators — or lawmakers, if it’s something that would require an act of Congress to accomplish: Water concessionaires can either be held to a much higher standard of service reliability than they are now, or they can be compelled to allow (and perhaps even provide) local backup systems similar to the ones they replaced.
No one in a reasonably civilized country in the 21st century should lack access to clean water at any time, and certainly not for periods that can be measured in days, with no more than “until further notice” as a guide to when service may be restored.
There is no legitimate reason why it should happen again.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
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