The irony of water rationing

“WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!” This is an irony in an archipelago like the Philippines where water is abundant inland and along the surrounding shores.

Last week, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System instructed its two concessionaires – the Maynilad Water and Manila Water – to start rationing their water supply services to their customers in the metropolis.

The reason given by the water agency is an expected shortage of the natural commodity by the last quarter of this year and – heaven forbid! – up to the first half of 2016.

What is the cause of the short supply, the public is asking.

Primarily, because of the heat and dry spell that the country is now experiencing, making water hard to come by in those periods cited above.

Government authorities are blaming the extra-ordinary drought triggered by El Niño, or the warming of the atmosphere. This wrath of nature causes ground water to dry up – rivers, lakes, falls, and even the neighboring wells in the countryside.

Similarly, the diminished water vapor from the earth to form as rain clouds disappear from the skies. And no drops of rain will fall down to earth.

All these gifts of nature can never be found or harnessed by science and technology elsewhere on earth. Their disappearance on earth results in drought and dry spell, destroying agriculture.

And water or lack of it takes away from man the comfort, well-being, and medical benefits that are vital to his existence.

And the government by issuing warning and plea to save water only demonstrates its helplessness and failure to ward off the scarcity. In spite of its huge financial resources, it has shown only failure in securing its inhabitants from this impending disaster.

For decades and decades, the shortage of the commodity has been plaguing us. And yet the government has failed to install measures to forestall the disaster. All these years it is the people that are harangued to conserve water, but there is nothing apparently the government has done to do the same.

Oh, yes, I remember a couple of moves from government agencies in instilling water conservation: During the time of President Erap, there were these government directives – no more golf courses were to be built because they consumed so much water while watering the greens; and enjoining wealthy homeowners not to replace the water in their swimming pool too often, not to clean their cars using water hose, and to water their gardens and plants only once a day.

Well, any way one looks at it, the water-rationing started last Sept. 16 in my Quezon City district, the residents blamed the government planners. Why is this so?

They said the problem has been pestering inhabitants for decades. It appears there is no end in sight. Then this is pure government neglect.

It is apparent the engineers, management experts, and hydrologists under the employ of MWSS are inept. They don’t have the foresight to thwart the problem well in advance.

Well, they have always the Malacañang to point their fingers at.

Meanwhile, the extremely inconvenienced millions of households in the metropolis can only look at with envy what the Ifugaos have done to sustain water for their rice terraces for the past 1,000 years or more.

To think that at the time they built those wonders of the world, they had no engineers, management experts, and hydrologists.