MEDIUM RARE
Imagine 100 families living in a condo all flushing their toilets at the same time. Then imagine 30 new condos, each 20 stories tall, rising in the NCR. Question: Are you comfortable drawing up such a flushing scenario?
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink, rued the poet. Chest-high floods competing for media attention with parades of drums aching to be filled with clean water. Meanwhile, the threat persists of blackouts in the provinces for lack of fuel. No water. No light at the end of the day/tunnel.
The thought of “water service interruptions” in the megacity during the rainy season is enough to fry your brains. As sure as climate change is no longer a mere buzzword is how history teaches that ancient civilizations died when their rivers ran dry.
It is no comfort to be told that the Philippines – an archipelago, by the way — isn’t the only country experiencing a critical lack of water that’s safe for drinking; but it is a source of distress to know how millions of children all over the world have lost their childhood fetching water for their families. Moreover, every two minutes a child dies of waterborne diseases.
President Marcos Jr.’s wish for a Department of Water Resources could not have come at a better time, no matter that it’s not an original idea. President Cory ran out of time to fulfil her dream to construct a new source of water, nor could her son, Noynoy, see it through, four presidencies later. Days ago our hopes were dashed yet again: the vaunted Kaliwa dam, what could’ve been the answer to our prayers, will need to sleep another century, perhaps more.
While waiting for a Department of Water to become reality, dare we expect our legislators to give stronger teeth to a law to protect Sierra Madre from murderers of endangered trees and endangered forest rangers. When senators and congresspersons return to work next month they could also legislate, one way or another, the construction of catch basins all over Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao to save and harvest rainwater while preventing floods.
Just because such basins are not spectacularly expensive and massive like dams should not be a reason not to build them.
