Conserving water

The Bacolod City Water District is calling for bidders to supply it with 22,000 cubic meters of water daily to be able to meet its requirements of 42,000. This is ironic because the official record of BACIWA shows that it is wasting 42 percent of the water it produced. This is called the Non-Revenue Water – water that people pay for but never used. If this water were saved, BACIWA would not need to enter into a contract that makes it a retailer of somebody's water. It is tragic that BACIWA concessionaires have to pay for NRW due to its inefficiency. BACIWA takes the easy, lazy road by just buying and selling.

Despite effort to make BACIWA account for every drop of water it produces, there seems to be no compulsion to insure efficiency. It is just asking others to produce the water and no matter how costly, BACIWA simply passes on the cost.

People should therefore, on their own, conserve water to reduce their dependence and high water bill from BACIWA. The heavens are generous with water but most don't bother to save this gift. They seem content in just paying through the nose when they can reduce their water bills tremendously with a little effort and help mitigate water shortage.

In my former residence I had one water tank that catches rain water. I pump this water into an overhead tank, also five cubic feet size. This water is for cleaning, laundry and the watering the plants. In my new house, since we are not allowed to have overhead tanks, I have large containers behind the house that catches rain water also for laundry, cleaning and watering. I save a lot of money for a little expense.

We have read of schools and other buildings that also harvest rain water and in some places this water is not just for cleaning and watering but even for drinking. Rain water that falls in roofs and captured in various ingenious ways is called “gray water”.

Rainwater harvesting is a growing movement worldwide. There are even new designs to harvest and recycle bathroom water reducing water loss with great savings.

Saving water involves some cost but two things are attained here – water is conserved rather than flowing down the drain and money is saved that recovers the cost in the longer term.

Communities, like subdivisions have also begun conserving water just like home water systems but in larger scale. Rain water is stored in large tanks or reservoir and treated. The community draws water from them at a minimal fee. This reduces pressure on the traditional community water system, like BACIWA. Water districts ought to be more creative than rely in the usual sourcing of water because the environment, brought about by climate change is reordering our water sources.

DILG Secretary Mar Roxas is pushing for water systems in many barangays but while the traditional water pump system is fine, he should study why many deep wells were abandoned. The deep well system was initiated by President Ramon Magsaysay and it succeeded for a while until the water ran out from 120 feet below and nobody wanted to spend for pump maintenance. He should instead send his technical people to study and install systems to harvest gray water which never runs out.

One of the problems I cited earlier was the running off of rain water into the sewage system instead of being trapped to drip down into the subterranean rivers. The concreting of roads and sidewalks have prevented water from staying put and seep down in the same way that tree roots catch water to replenish the earth.

More cities and residential areas are adopting the “permeable pavement”. Instead of concreting the sidewalks and driveways and repelling water directly into the drains and the canals, small portions are left uncovered so that grass can grow into them. These openings allow water to get into them and absorbed into the soil.

There are permeable surfaces or pavements here in Bacolod and Talisay. They make the pavement look green, pleasant and cool because of the vegetation in-between.

There are now artificial lakes that trap rain water and help reduce flood waters. These lakes are developed with aquatic life to prevent mosquitoes from breeding there. Fish, frogs and aquatic flora can grow in these ponds. Depending on how large and deep these lakes are, they can be developed for fishing for food, hobby or sports.

We need to change our understanding of water to preserve it.*

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