Should potable water supply be big worry for a growing Clark with more and more investors being lured to settle at the freeport? Not that I have read enough about the histories of great cities such as New York, London, Tokyo, or Shanghai, but I have yet to come across anything saying at a point in their histories, they were fractured even temporarily by lack of water. Water supply, surely, must have swelled proportionately with their populations.
So when Clark is talked about as a future Hong Kong or Singapore, water supply can be taken peripherally.
Right?
Wrong, says Cong Renato “Abong” Tayag, noting that modern climate change has altered the scenarios of what have always been patterns. On top of this, there’s what he perceives as lack of water supply foresight, at least within the state-owned Clark Development Corp. which manages Clark freeport.
Cong Abong, an advocate of bulk water source for the freeport and nearby cities, knows too well a human could die if deprived of water for 48 hours. As for food, survival can last even over 40 days, he says.
He notes that at present, what he calls the Greater Clark Area (GCA) relies solely on pumps seeping up waterfrom aquifers or underground sources. Clark installs more pumps to supply water to new investors and so do water districts in the cities of Angeles and Mabalacat and elsewhere where there is demand.
But logic is that if the replenishment of aquifers is overtaken by demand on the ground, all are under threat from fatal thirst, nevermind bathing and laundry, etc. The continuing logic is that, therefore, other water sources must be found now and projects to make them available done earliest.
It’s much unwise to wait for 2025, which experts from here and abroad estimated to be the water crisis point for local folk unless enough measures are undertaken for the needs of a ballooning population, especially because of Clark’s being touted as the capital of the future, if not its being identified as one of the few areas to survive permanent inundation amid rising sea levels due to climate change.
Geologists from UP, whose study established that coastal towns in Western Luzon are subsiding, blamed too much extraction of underground water in the areas. Sinking lands meeting rising seas equals Atlantis. This relays a huge lesson to Clark and nearby folk surviving on water supply from underneath.
“Bulk water,” Cong Abong says, meaning waters from the Mt. Pinatubo areas draining into Angeles City’s Abacan river. Such waters could be dammed , something like the Angat dam which has been source of Metro Manila drinking water.
Cong Abong credits Angeles Mayor Ed Pamintuan for espousing an advocacy similar to his, by launching a program to plant a million trees in the watersheds in the west towards Mt. Pinatubo. Watersheds are vital for bulk water supply, Cong Abong stresses, in an eclectic flow of thought that’s forest-green.
Known to have good access to Pres. Duterte, Pamintuan is slated to ask Malacanang to declare some 4,000 hectares of watershed lands in the areas close to Mt. Pinatubo as watershed protected areas as part of the plan to ensure Clark and nearby folk they will not die of thirst, nay, even go on living as usual with their laundry and bathing despite a worsened climate change by 2025.
The shovels and spades have yet to be seen, yet the awful slip of 2025 seems to be already showing.
Cong Abong has his fingers hurting crossed.