CEBU CITY, Philippines – Make sure to store water.
This was the advise of the Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) to its consumers amidst the threat brought by Tropical Depression (TD) Usman.
In a press release issued today, December 28, MCWD said that rains brought by TD Usman may cause power outages and flooding that may also affect their operations.
“Some 70 percent of MCWD’s daily supply come from groundwater wells which rely on electricity to pump water out for distribution in the entire Metro Cebu,” said the MCWD statement.
In the event of power outages, MCWD will have to resort to the use of their stand-by generator sets to continue to produce water.
However, they are only able to produce 50 percent of their daily water supply capacity, said the MCWD statement.
Heavy rains and flooding also affects the turbidity of water which they extract from surface water sources like the Luyang River in Carmen town in northern Cebu.
“If a heavy downpour causes flooding in freshwater sources, muddy water is produced which fails the standards set by the Philippine National Standards for Drinking Water that MCWD needs to comply with,” said the MCWD press statement.
“The Luyang River in Carmen experiences this. It is one of MCWD’s bulk supply sources and is supplied to customers in Liloan, Consolacion, parts of Mandaue and Cebu cities and the entire Mactan island.”
To avoid inconvenience, consumers are advised to store water that they could use in the next 24 hours.
An option is to store rainwater.