Which is more important: electricity or water?
In the name of progress and economic development, electricity is needed. This is particularly true in Mindanao , the country’s second largest island.
“The demand (for electricity) is increasing and yet the supply is decreasing,” Manuel M. Orig, the first vice president for Mindanao affairs of the Aboitiz Power Corporation (APC), claims.
Currently, there is a shortfall between supply and demand for electric power. From 2010 to 2014, it is projected that the shortfall between supply and demand of power in Mindanao will reach 484 megawatt (MW).
“This is equivalent to cutting power supply to five major cities in Mindanao ,” Orig points out. Namely: Davao , Cagayan de Oro, General Santos, Iligan, and Zamboanga.
“Unless a new power plant is built, the situation is going to get worse,” Orig warns. “Investment will not come in, jobs will be lost, factories may shut down, and the people of Mindanao will have blackouts of up to six hours a day by 2014.”
Thus, APC is bent on helping the island by building a new coal power plant. It is investing around P25 billion for the project that will built two generation units with a capacity of 150 MW each.
“The project will be built on a 52-hetare property straddling barangay Binugao, Toril in Davao City and barangay Inawayan in Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur,” it said in a press briefing kit.
Both the councils of Davao City and Sta. Cruz approved the construction of the coal-fired power plant.
But Vice-Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte stalled the approval of a resolution reclassifying a parcel of land in Binugao (as mandated by law) when he learned that the plant will be extracting fresh water for its operations.
Duterte thought APC will use saline water for its operations. Yes, but only for the plant’s cooling system. Fresh water is actually needed to fully manage a coal-fired power plant. Without water, no steam can be produced.
“A typical 500-megawatt coal-fired power plant draws about 2.2. billion gallons of water each year from nearby water bodies, such as lakes, rivers, or oceans, to create steam for turning its turbines,” the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists said in its website.
“This is enough water to support a city of approximately 250,000 people.”
“Water out will be lost forever,” Duterte was quoted as saying. “Money cannot replace what has been lost forever.” He also said, “This (fresh water) is a supply that is intended for the next generations (of the Davao population).”
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources, in one of its recent reports, identified Davao as among the major cities in the country, suffering from a shortage in fresh water supply.
The National Water Resources Board has also singled out Davao as one of the urbanized areas where water is consumed intensively.
Earlier studies, particularly the one done by the Japan International Cooperation Agency in 1991, listed Davao as one of the nine major cities with “water-critical areas.”
The other eight cities were Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, Baguio , Angeles, Bacolod , Iloilo , Cagayan de Oro and Zamboanga.
“Water is life,” the old proverb insists. Tell that to Filipinos and they will readily agree. A study made by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) shows that at least 431 municipalities outside Metro Manila are without water.
In the 1950s, the Philippines had as much as 9,600 cubic meters of clean water per person, according to Dr. Rafael D. Guerrero, former head of the Philippine Council for Aquatic and Marine Research and Development.
Four decades later, Filipinos must make do with little more than a third for that volume – 3,300 cubic meters per capita.
Today, the Philippines ranks second from the lowest among Southeast Asian countries in terms of per capita water availability per year with only 1,907 cubic meters. Thailand is at the bottom, with 1,854 cubic meters.
Vietnamese have more than twice what Filipinos get: 4,591 cubic meters.
“The image of a water-rich Philippines is a mirage,” Gregory C. Ira, former head of the water equity in the lifescape and landscape study (WELLS) of the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, once pointed out.
“There is a water crisis in the Philippines , one of the wettest countries of Southeast Asia.”
Water covers over 70 per cent of the earth’s surface and is a major force in controlling the climate by storing vast quantities of heat.
About 97.5 per cent of all water is found in the ocean and only the remaining 2.5 per cent is considered fresh water.
Unfortunately, 99.7 per cent of that fresh water is unavailable, trapped in glaciers, ice sheets, and mountainous areas.
Water is drawn in two fundamental ways: from wells, tapping underground sources of water called aquifers; or from surface flows – that is, from lakes, rivers, and man-made reservoirs.
“Water, like religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people,” said Mikhail Gorbachev as quoted in Peter Swanson’s Water: The Drop of Life.
“Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to it. People move when there is too little of it. People move when there is too much of it. People journey down it. People write, sing and dance about it. People fight over it. And all people, everywhere and every day, need it.”
One billion people, about a sixth of humanity, lack access to safe drinking water, according to United Nations data. And one in three people live in regions with water scarcity. “Demand for water is rocketing with a rising population,” the UN Population Fund warns.
In the Philippines , at least 17 million people have no access to adequate and safe drinking water. “(About) 31 percent of illnesses in the country are water-related due to lack of clean drinking water supply and efficient sanitary facilities,” said Rep. Bernadette R. Herrera-Dy of Bagong Henerasyon Party List.
In 24 provinces, one of every five residents quaffs water from dubious sources, the Philippine Human Development Report says.
These provinces are : Sulu, Maguindanao, Tawi-Tawi, Basilan, Masbate, Zamboanga del Norte and Sur, Negros Oriental and Occidental, Sultan Kudarat, Palawan, Camarines Norte, Leyte, Misamis Occidental, Apayao, Quezon, North Cotabato, Bukidnon, Iloilo, Guimaras, Agusan del Sur, Nueva Vizcaya, Ilocos Norte and Benguet.
Meanwhile, Dr. Sandra Postel, director of the Massachusetts-based Global Water Policy Project, believes water problems will be alongside climate change as a threat to the human future, and global warming will worsen water problems.
“Although the two are related, water has no substitutes,” she explains. “We can transition away from coal and oil to solar, wind and other renewable energy sources. But there is no transitioning away from water to something else.”
“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
