Yuck! factor

MOST people outside the Philippines have learned how to say “wastewater,” but not over here. In polite conversation, we talk about “used water,” possibly because we are more delicate when it comes to hearing unpleasant words like sludge, urine, feces. Wait until we find out that state-of-the-science technologies are now converting piss and feces into nutrients, minerals, and fuel.

You mean, from recycled water into potable drinking water? Maybe not yet in the Philippines, although Manila Water has built chemical plants to turn solid waste, sludge, and wastewater mostly from households and industries into useful, usable water for every purpose except drinking. And why not? Astronauts drink their own recycled urine, using it also for washing up, just as Americans in San Diego, Calif., and Singaporeans are drinking water recycled from who-knows-where. (Many years ago wasn’t there an Indian prime minister who attributed his state of health to drinking his own urine?)

Because of the yuck! factor, Manila Water’s head of communications Jeric Sevilla could not bring himself to show audiovisually how the filthiest water from Metro Manila’s dirtiest rivers – San Juan, Marikina, Pasig – is flushed out to Laguna Lake and Manila Bay before that same water, now de-sludged, is rerouted to pipes for distribution to its customers. Don’t worry, one system is for drinking, another system is for agricultural and industrial (hotels, factories) uses. Those two systems, he vowed, don’t overlap, just as Manila Water’s network does not seep into Maynilad’s and vice versa. Yes, an invisible wall-- of water? -- separates the two companies even if their functions are “aligned” for efficiency by MWSS.

Feeling queasy about “used water”? As the UN warned on World Water Day, “neglecting the opportunities arising from improved wastewater management is nothing less than unthinkable.” The UN would never bring God into the picture, but who else could make the rain fall into dams, mountains, and lakes?