A City Council Task Force on Drinking Water

During its August 18, 2009 regular session, the Cagayan de Oro City Council passed two resolutions demonstrating its resolve to get to the bottom of the reportedly imminent crisis facing the city´s groundwater resources.

Resolution # 9784-2009 requested the Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to underwrite a follow-up study to two previous ones published six and 12 years ago, respectively, by these two institutions on the city´s aquifers and ground water resources.

Resolution # 9783-2009 similarly requested President Arroyo to seek the assistance of the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) through its Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) to check the status of groundwater resources in Cagayan de Oro.

Without going into the specifics of each resolution, suffice to say the city council has sufficiently demonstrated its alarm over the reported "mining" of groundwater from the city´s aquifers. Meaning, water is being extracted by the Cagayan de Oro City Water District (COWD) and private companies at a rate that is beyond the aquifers ability to replenish.

The COWD was created in August 1, 1973, (the first in the country) upon the impetus of then City Mayor Reuben Canoy to address the city´s growing water needs. For 30 years, the COWD was one of, if not the best water district in the country under the able leadership of Engr. Ernesto San Juan as its general manager. It garnered several awards from the Local Water Utilities Administration (Lwua) for its performance and became the template from which many of the country´s water districts are now patterned after.

However, the 2003 AdMU study on the city´s groundwater resources showed the COWD and many other private establishments over which it had no control (this being the purvue of the National Water Resources Board) show groundwater was already being extracted from the city´s aquifers at a rate in excess of what the aquifers could replenish. Using the COWD´s updated production rate of 130,000 cubic meters of water daily as of last year, the COWD alone was already taxing our aquifers 38 per cent beyond its "recharge rate."

Fortunately for Cagayan de Oro, it is the only city in the country with a private bulk water supplier, thanks to the foresight of Engr. San San who laid the groundworks for this key project during his term. The project can now supply 100,000 cu.m. of treated potable water daily, although the COWD is only drawing 40,000 cu.m. daily two years after its started operation, and the number of its concessionaires has increased by 2,000.

This confluence of factors: increasing demand for potable water, decreasing groundwater supply and the proliferation of deep wells further depleting our aquifers, are coming together at a time when there´s no existing central authority capable of addressing these issues in a coordinated, comprehensive and rationale manner.

Perhaps the city council, through its Environment Committee chaired by Councilor Ian Acenas, can organize an ad hoc committee cum task force in the interim which can sit down together to resolve issues such as these. Our aquifers and groundwater resources are under siege, and there´s no material time left to address them through the routinary operating procedures of the individual agencies and institutions concerned.

Getting AdMU and JICA to underwrite an updated study of our groundwater resources and aquifer s is a good first step but it is a journey of a thousand miles before these issues can be logically addressed and the environment just doesn´t have any more time left to wait.