Manila Water’s ‘expensive’ water treatment plant project may be revived

Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) is now re-considering Manila Water Company, Inc.’s ₱15-billion Laguna Lake East Bay project, which was dismissed by former MWSS Administrator Reynaldo Velasco in 2018 for being “expensive.”

MWSS Chief Regulator Patrick Ty said in a text exchange that MWSS will conduct a virtual public consultation next week for the project “to determine if it should push through.”

He also said that the public consultation was supposed to happen in March or April but it was moved to a much later date because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are just restarting,” Ty told Business Bulletin. “It’s similar to the public consultation for the Wawa Dam we did last year.”

Manila Water’s East Bay Water Source project involves extracting water from the easternmost part of Laguna Lake, the biggest lake in the Philippines and the second biggest inland freshwater lake in Southeast Asia.

The project is supposed to help Manila Water treat additional 250 million liters of water per day (mld).

However, this project didn't really sit well with Velasco, who is now the chairman of MWSS Board of Trustees.

Explaining his decision to shut down Manila Water’s proposal, Velasco said in 2018 that the mandate of his agency is to look for new water sources that won’t cost too much and won’t take so much to build.

From time to time, Manila Water and Maynilad Water Services Inc. are still having water supply issues since Metro Manila’s major dams are not getting enough rains and there’s no new water sources that are coming online despite the growing population.

Metro Manila, home to 12 million people, still currently gets 97 percent of its water needs from the 53-year old Angat Dam.

In the latter part of 2018, after Velasco dismissed the Laguna Lake East Bay project, MWSS approved the Wawa Dam project, which will soon be constructed by WawaJVCo, the joint venture between port magnate Enrique Razon’s Prime Infra and businessman Oscar Violago’s San Lorenzo Ruiz Builders Group.

Manila Water is still part of the project, but only as a sole off-taker of the water that will be treated by this new dam.