The Puerto Princesa City Water District (PPCWD) said a water crisis alert level 3 could happen if their plan to conduct cloud seeding operations next month will not be successful.
During the Behind the News program on Saturday, information officer Jenn Rausa said that same as with 2019, PPCWD has declared the water crisis alert level 1 by the month of February and after a month it reached another level until the declaration of alert level 3 by April 2019.
“Kung hindi agad maging evident ang maging result ng cloud seeding, yong effects ng cloud seeding kapag nag-start na tayo, maaaring umabot na tayo ng level 3 pero kung maiiwasan di na tayo aabot,” she said.
During a water crisis alert level 3, the city water district resorts to water rationing to address the insufficiency of water supply around the city.
She added that if there is no occurrence of rains in the following weeks despite the augmentation measures implemented, the level of water supply in the main water source, Campo Uno will continuously decrease.
Aside from Campo Uno, Rausa added that the pumping stations are all operational to augment supply at this situation but due to experienced weather, she said that depletion is expected in the water source.
Rausa said that consumers in the poblacion area are mostly struggling with the current situation of water supply.
“Ang ma-isa-suggest namin primarily, kung hahayaan nila na bukas, wag full open yong kanilang mga gripo. Kung makakapag-imbak ng tubig, mag-imbak talaga especially yong consumers natin ngayon na may supply pa ng tubig dahil ang primarily affected ngayon ay yong bayan,” she said.
She said among the most affected barangays are Barangay Bancao-Bancao, portions of Barangay San Miguel along Baltan street, Wescom Road, Naval area and Hartman; and selected part of barangay Mandaragat along new Buncag.
Barangays Sta. Monica, Sta. Lourdes and Tagburos and Luzviminda are also included, where the PPCWD is already conducting water rationing.
“Itong kinahaharap natin na problema is a natural phenomenon, nagkukulang talaga tayo ng tubig (kapag tag-init). Kaya sa water district ay may expansion project,” she said.
Rausa said that the ongoing projects such as the construction of Water Supply Improvement Project-Phase II (WSIP II) and reservoir would be a great help to store water, however, due to lack of time, these expansion projects will not yet benefit the member-consumers of PPCWD in 2020.
The WSIP II is expected to be completed and be fully operational in the first quarter of 2021 after the two-year construction period started in August 2019.
“Hopefully dahil na-forecast naman natin na kaya nito ma-meet ang growing demand ng population also yong pag-boom ng establishments at ng tourism,” she said.
