ILOILO CITY -- Water suppliers in the Visayas are facing supply problems because of the drying up of water sources due to climatic changes.

Melchor Bibanco, president of the Visayas Association of Water Districts, said that most water districts are experiencing supply problems especially during the summer season. "Our spring water sources usually dry up at this time. It's getting worse each year," Bibanco said in an interview.

Bibanco attributed the depletion of water sources to the El Niño weather phenomenon as part of the global climatic changes. El Niño's a global phenomenon associated with extreme climatic changes characterized by devastating rains, winds, drought and other events.

Remus Braganza, president of the Water District General Managers Association in Panay, said there is a growing problem with finding enough sources of potable water because of the lesser amount of rainfall. He said unregulated diggings of wells are also depleting the ground water.

Bibanco said the water supply problems have been aggravated by the lack of capacity of water districts to implement expansion projects to find other sources of water and projects to make their systems more efficient.

"While water districts are among the government owned and controlled corporations, we do not get funding from the government," Bibanco said.

He said the lack of funds hinder their capacity to address the growing water needs brought by the increasing population. In Iloilo, the Metro Iloilo Water District has started rationing water supply to its consumers because of the expected increase in demand and the low water level from its source.

The MIWD extracts water from the Tigum River through an intake dam in Barangay Daja in Maasin town 29.5 km northwest of Iloilo City. It also gets its supply from seven pumping stations in deep wells in Oton and San Miguel.

It provides around 1.2 million cubic meters of water monthly to around 26,000 customers in the towns of Oton, Pavia, Santa Barbara, Cabatuan, Maasin, San Miguel and Iloilo City.

MIWD Interim General Manager Edwin Reyes said the rationing would last for the whole summer season. He said there has been a decrease in the water flow from the Maasin watershed.

MIWD director Tom Villaroman said there is a need to implement a massive reforestation program at the watershed area to stop the depletion of water sources. He said areas served by MIWD would face shortage by 2010 if the depletion of the water sources in Maasin will continue and if no alternative sources of water would be found.

The MIWD is implementing a P207- million project to rehabilitate its piping system.

Villaroman said some of their pipes and piping system date back to the 1920s which is the main cause of leakages which cause around 40 percent of water they produce to be wasted.*NPB

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