WATER CRISIS WORSENS

Residents of Barangay Mambaling bring out their pails and other containers to fetch water from their barangay fire truck as the crisis worsens, with more areas complaining about the lack of supply. (Contributed by Cebu City Councilor Dave Tumulak)

If the water shortage persists despite additional supply from bulk water suppliers, the Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) will consider water rationing.

Charmaine Rodriguez-Kara, MCWD’s public affairs head, said they will make an assessment before the end of the month based on the complaints they receive from concessionaires and the impact of nearly 10,000 cubic meters additional supply.

“It’s possible that eventually, we will issue an advisory on rationing. But as of now, our production department has assured that we still have water during off-peak hours,” she told Cebu Daily News.

“What we’re advising is really to store water,” she added.

She said rationing means that even during off-peak hours, supply will be rotated among the affected areas and each area will have flowing water only for a limited number of hours.

The off-peak period is from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Even then, Kara said not all villages may have flowing water taps.

So far, Kara said they have received complaints from Carreta, Mambaling and Pasil. MCWD does not have concessionaires in the mountain areas beyond Barangay Busay.

HOT LINES

The Cebu City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (CCDRRMC) yesterday started distributing water in four sitios in Barangay Mambaling.

Aside from Mambaling, the barangays that have availed of the water assistance were Sapangdaku, Pulangbato, Binaliw, Babag, Malubog, Pasil, Sambag 1, Sambag 2 and Kamputhaw.

Cebu City Councilor Dave Tumulak, who heads the CCDRRMC, said they have established hotlines at their Command Control Center (C3) so barangay captains can request for augmentation water supply.

“It’s on a case-to-case basis. Upon the request of a barangay official, we will verify the situation if it’s really true. And then we will endorse them to get the water,” Tumulak said.

Barangay fire trucks are used to get water from the Pilipinas Water Resources Inc. (PWRI), a private water supplier based in the South Road Properties (SRP) that has pledged to give 8,000 cubic meters of excess water daily to barangays that need it, free of charge.

Water distribution in Sitios Pagtambayayong, Abya, Biking and Alaska Proper in Barangay Mambaling started at around 9 a.m. and ended at past 1 p.m. yesterday.

Fire trucks from Barangays Quiot, Inayawan, Cogon Pardo, Pasil and Basak San Nicolas were used for the distribution.

“Atong na-observe nga ang gamay nga fire truck nga 1200-liter capacity mga five times nagbalikbalik kagahapon. (During yesterday’s distribution, the small fire truck with a 1,200-liter capacity did five rounds of distribution.) So that’s around 6,000 cubic meters,” Tumulak said.

He assured that the use of the fire trucks for water distribution will not affect emergency fire operations because there are other fire trucks from adjacent barangays on standby and also those from the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP).

SUPPLY

Kara, in a text message, said there is still water supply in low-lying areas and for those who are not at the tip of the distribution system in the four cities and four municipalities under their service area.

But she also said many people have reported that they have not had water for more than 24 hours.

“We are verifying every complaint. The complaints of no water are in upland Liloan, affected areas in Cebu City, Talisay and Lapu-Lapu. What is not covered by the advisory but also had complaints this week is Mandaue but less than 10 customers for now,” Kara said in her text message to CDN.

A task force called “Water is Life” was organized in Cebu City to take care of the requests for water augmentation called in by the village chiefs.

It is headed by City Administrator Lucelle Mercado together with Association of Barangay Councils (ABC) president Philip Zafra and Harold Alcontin of the city’s Quick Response Team (QRT).

PROCESS

Alcontin said the Control Center will forward the request of barangay captains for water to the Patubig Program of the Department of Public Services (DPS). DPS will then give the barangays a slip which they will present to the PWRI plant at the SRP.

The barangays, using their fire trucks, will then be the ones to distribute the water to their residents.

Tumulak said water distribution is scheduled today in Barangays Pasil and Sawang Calero.

In Sambag 2, barangay captain Carl Stephen Belarmino said they’ve been using two of their fire trucks for water distribution to different affected sitios.

“We’ve done the distribution several times already. We go around the different sitios. Almost all of our 18 sitios are already experiencing the problem on water supply,” he said.

They’re using two fire trucks with a capacity of 5,000 liters and 1,000 liters respectively.

But he was also concerned that they might have to use their fire trucks during emergencies just like what happened the other night in Barangay

Capitol Site where a fire left almost 100 people homeless.

Kamputhaw Barangay Captain Trifonio Liquigan said that although the water supply is not yet a big problem in their barangay, a number of residents

living in the elevated sitio of Purok 8 have been experiencing low to no water supply.

“We only have a small fire truck with a capacity of 1,500 liters. We used that for the distribution. There were around a thousand people who asked for the water. We had to do several rounds,” Liquigan told CDN.

They have been getting help from Barangay Tejero. Barangay Captain Jessielou Cadungog told CDN that they lent their truck with a capacity of 1,000 gallons to Kamputhaw for water distribution last week.

MCWD earlier identified 45 areas in Metro Cebu in elevated and interior portions that have low pressure or no water at all due to the deficit in surface water supply brought by the El Niño.

Kara said this might have already worsened because there has been no rain in the past days.

She said the situation is expected to improve because of the additional 1,200 cubic meters of water daily in MCWD’s distribution lines in Mandaue since last Friday.

Kara said they’re also expecting additional 7,000 cubic meters of water daily from Abejo Waters Corp. (AWC) which will be injected in Barangay Cabancalan, also in Mandaue City, within this week.

“And hopefully by next week, the Abejo Waters can also inject already the additional 1,200 cubic meters of water per day at the Barangay Guadalupe injection point in Cebu City,” she added.