The National Convention of the Association of Tourism Officers of the Philippines (ATOP) at the Camarines Sur Convention Center on October 3 to 6 has given emphasis to tourism industry in the region, in Naga City with special mention, because of its highly developed facilities such as hotels and restaurants, eateries and restaurants, banks and money exchange facilities, not to mention the various means of transportation and places to go to and see — all far from the disastrous embrace of Mayon Volcano. With the development of tourism, however, comes the very issue that was also bannered in Bicol Mail a week ago about the depletion of the groundwater in Naga City.
The experience of the unavailability of enough water to meet the needs of the big number of visitors in Naga City during the Peñafrancia week is just an illustration and a foretaste of how the groundwater in Naga City could be depleted in the years to come. The water table of Naga City can only go as far as it is today with its current number of daily users, but an increase in the number of users as those during the Peñafrancia fiesta makes the supply insufficient. We might say that the crowd is extraordinary and it happens only during the Peñafrancia fiesta — yet the experience is there because the groundwater in Naga has not augmented while its users are last increasing, while the population has registered an annual growth rate of 1.65 percent, while more subdivisions have opened which in turn have attracted more people to reside in Naga City, while the construction boom has caused the rise of malls, of new buildings. It is just like having as many vehicles as we have today use the same small streets constructed when Naga was given its Charter in 1948. It is having too many in too small for too long.
The fear raised by having a depleted groundwater for Naga City by 2010 is not just imaginary. It is real, as real as — described by Councilor Bemadetie F. Roco in her privilege speech last Tuesday — the realities described in Al Gore’s “The Inconvenient Truth” that can have dire consequences and prospects for the people of Naga City.
Water depletion cannot be solved as instantaneously as by a mere approval of a resolution or an ordinance. The issue on the depletion of groundwater for the City of Naga has its roots in not having enough of the rainwater infiltrate to the soil and thus increase the volume of groundwater, in having the same volume of groundwater several decades ago serve the needs of users who have grown a hundred fold, in not having monitored and checked the number of water withdrawals with the use of unregistered pumps and wells.
The number of pumping stations within the Metro Naga Water District — which were unheard of a seore of years ago — may be mistaken as a sign of progress in terms of a bigger number of users or of the number of jobs opened for the unemployed in Naga but actually is a foreboding of fearful things to come, that the underground cannot give us more than what it has or that not enough underground water can be pumped from it.
The study conducted by Care Philippines, the World Wildlife Foundation and the International Institute for Environment and Development on the Yabo watershed in Mount Isarog reveals that as of 2006 the water consumption of 4,480 cubic meters a day in Naga City is depleting the groundwater potential and this rate of consumption is projected to increase to 13,532 cubic meters per day in 2010. That statement hits us smack on our face, just as Comelec Commissioner Benjamin Abalos was with the controversial deals on the broadband project with ZTE Corp. of China. The disastrous consequences are there and are inevitable and they will come, as death and taxes, if we do not do anything here and now to conserve our soil for greater water infiltration capacity.
We can prepare the City and our children for their coming if we do our share in caring for our groundwater supply, as suggested in the study, by not just planting in the farms of these upper barangays of Panicuason and Carolina in Naga City and of Palestina in Pili which comprise the Yabo catchment any kind of tree but vetiver grass as hedgegrows since these will help in recharging groundwater potential by increasing the filtration rate of the soil. If the other barangays of Carangcang in Magarao and of Siembre in Bombon could be fashioned into a catchment similar to that of Yabo, then we can have a fighting chance against water depletion.
Any legislation to increase our groundwater potential is fair and just and deserves our support. The Metro Naga Water District is not the answer to water depletion. We are.
