NWRB's DAYRIT advocates a moratorium to the extraction of groundwater, especially in Metro Manila, a step he has already implemented in some parts of Muntinlupa, Parañaque and Las Piñas. "Water is not perpetual," he says, "and our aquifers need to be recharged" if future generations are to draw water from them.

A more environmentally sound solution to the water shortage has been to develop more surface water sources. Apart from the newly-opened Umiray-Angat Transbasin Project, the Metro Manila water concessionaires are investing in the Laiban Dam in Tanay, Rizal and the Kanan Dam in General Nakar, Quezon. The government is also considering "recycling" the Laguna Lake for Metro Manila's use.

In Northern Luzon, the government is relying on two water projects: the Casecnan Transbasin Project and the San Roque multipurpose dam to provide water for Luzon in the future. But both have huge social costs, among them the destruction of indigenous peoples' ancestral domains in the uplands and farming communities in the lowland.

Except for Metro Manila where in the future domestic and industrial users will dominate water supply, the major water need in the country continue to be for agriculture. For this need, the government is considering building impounding dams in the country's 17 major rivers that are to be ready by 2025. In some parts of the country, however, water users have taken steps on their own to explore other sources of water. In Cebu and in Capiz province, some households collect rainwater to augment the limited supply.

In the meantime, the water vendors are cashing it in as households are forced to pay ridiculous amounts for the increasingly scarce resource. Maynilad boss Rafael Alunan estimates that water bought from vendors cost from P70 to P100 for every cubic meter; the official average is only P6.13 per cubic meter. But water has proved to be so hard to come by that even the affluent without access to the concessionaires are paying huge sums for it. In BF Homes, Parañaque, where the subdivision developer controls the water supply, a household could expect to pay at least P300 a month for the privilege of having water flowing from the taps a mere three times a week. In Quezon City's Loyola Grand Villas, families are paying as much as P1,000 a month.

At a poor Quezon City community, families used to pay P15 for 15 minutes' worth of water drawn by vendors from illegally tapped connections. Residents would spend more than P500 each a month for water, a big dent on their incomes of laborers and vendors. But since getting connected to the Maynilad system in 1998, most of the community's residents there have been enjoying round-the-clock water supply and paying as little as P37 per household a month.

Both Maynilad and Manila Water now have programs that provide water service to urban poor families. The move was made largely to limit the leakage and theft, which translate into lost revenue. A bigger problem remains, though: how to deal with the affluent robbers.



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