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Sunday, March 17, 2024 Vol. 19 No. 154
P25.00 nationwide | 2 sections 12 pages | 7 DAYS A WEEK
As some parts of the PHL face the ravages of El Niño, Davao City has ample supply from the taps, thanks to a timely, strategic shift to bulk water.
‘SAVE WATER, SAVE EARTH’ D
By Manuel T. Cayon
AVAO CITY—An oft-repeated warning for many years says that the next Great War would be waged for water. But for this bustling southern city, water managers opted to officially rest its ground aquifers for the potable water needs of residents, and in their stead, fully commissioned the use of the river waters flowing from the watershed region of the city. Jovana Cresta T. Duhaylungsod, spokesperson of the Davao City Water District (DCWD), said the city bulk water supply “is now fully operational.” The project involves extracting part of the pristine river water for filtration and treatment before being pumped into the pipelines for household potable use. This was started towards the end of 2018 and completed late last year by the Apo Agua Infrastructura Inc., which is part of the Aboitiz group of companies. The Apo Agua has started distributing bulk water to the Calinan, Tugbok, Riverside, Dumoy, Cabantian and Panacan water supply systems (WSS) on December 1 last year. “Since December until right now, we are fine-tuning both of our systems, and part of that finetuning is the acceptance of the bulk water and the subsequent distribution to our customers. In our distribution, we made sure that the water has passed the Philippine National Standards for Drinking Water, which is the benchmark for water safety in the country,” she said. Duhaylungsod, the Division Manager A of the Community Relations and External Affairs Division of the DCWD, told the first
regular session of the 20th Congress on January 9 that following Apo Agua’s completion of the critical infrastructures needed, “the water delivered to the DCWD is safe and reliable”.
Water sufficiency
DUHAYLUNGSOD also reported significant improvement in the availability of water and pressure, especially in areas experiencing intermittent water supply since the start of the bulk water supply. The project involved the extraction of the surface water of the Panigan-Tamugan River situated inside the Talomo-Lipadas watershed in the northern part of the city. Shake Tuason, operations head of Apo Agua, said the company would like to see the consistency of the river water to supply the 300 million liters per day production requirement and to increase the capacity later. He said the river has so far exceeded the daily production, even though part of the usage of the entire river water should be allocated to other uses of the community, including small irrigation for farms further down the barangays. A walk-through of the facility shows part of the Panigan-Tamugan River run-off water would be diverted to the intake weir, which would send the water to the desander for filtration, removing rocks, sand and debris. The primary clarified water would then go to the conveyance and penstock pipeline in an 8-kilometer flow to the next stop at a surge tank, which
DESANDER and filtration plant of Apo-Agua Infrastructura Inc. MANUEL T. CAYON
serves as the pressure neutralizer before it goes to the water treatment plant. Tuason said the entire process is mostly automated, including the chlorination. Duhaylungsod said the chlorination level has not been set to the maximum of three parts per million, indicating the pristine condition of the water. She said the water district has installed chlorine level stations across the way up to Bunawan and Lasang District going northward. The joint venture of DCWD and Apo Agua would require the latter to be the bulk water supplier of the DCWD, and to do this, a weir has to be constructed along the river in the Barangay TawanTawan area, with a big portion of the river water being piped to its
treatment facility in Barangay Gumalang, some eight kilometers downstream.
Improved capacity
THE Apo Agua would be generating 109.5 million cubic meters of water in one year, or an equivalent of 300 million liters per day, according to Mae Che, external relations officer of the Apo Agua. In December and until this period, the extraction process has tested and commissioned the distribution of water to the eight key storage and treatment facilities of the DCWD in Dumoy, Calinan, Tugbok, Cabantian and Panacan, Talandang, Mandug and Indangan. The last five areas are located in the previously water-problematic areas. Continued on A2
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 55.3950 n JAPAN 0.3736 n UK 70.6619 n HK 7.0817 n CHINA 7.6991 n SINGAPORE 41.4633 n AUSTRALIA 36.4554 n EU 60.3141 n KOREA 0.0419 n SAUDI ARABIA 14.7712 Source: BSP (March 15, 2024)