Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 30) — Maynilad customers will experience longer service interruptions beginning Saturday due to the declining water level at La Mesa Dam.
The west zone concessionaire made the announcement on Wednesday, saying the dwindling dam water supply forced Manila Water — which provides services to Metro Manila’s east zone — to gradually suspend the cross-portal supply sharing between the two companies.
“This development will mean less supply for Maynilad to distribute, resulting in longer daily service interruption schedules starting April 1,” its statement read.
In a press briefing, Maynilad Water Supply Operations Head Ronald Padua said the longest possible duration of water service interruption would be 14 hours per day.
“Lumalabas meron pong sampung oras sila kada araw para makapag-ipon ng tubig [This means customers would have 10 hours in a day to store water],” he said of the worst-case scenario.
According to Padua, at least 1 million of their more than 1.5 million customers are affected.
“Ang tinitignan namin is kahit papaano naman mas mahaba ‘yung water supply window araw-araw nung lahat ng mga customers na naapektuhan,” he added. “Kasi kung kokontian namin ‘yung affected customers, posibleng meron pong customer na 24 hours walang tubig araw-araw.”
[Translation: Our objective is to shorten the time that customers experience service interruptions. If we reduce the number of affected customers, it is possible that some will have no water supply for the whole 24 hours of a day.]
Citing the looming El Niño weather phenomenon, Maynilad already started implementing daily service interruptions on March 28 to preserve the remaining supply in the Angat-Ipo system.
Prior to this, it said it has been augmenting supplies through the cross-portal arrangement with Manila Water since less water has been reaching the Novaliches Portal in Quezon City.
While this supply sharing will no longer be extended, Maynilad said the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System will send a letter-request to the National Water Resources Board for an increased allocation of 52 cubic meters per second from April to May.
This will enable Ipo Dam and La Mesa Dam to fully recover, resulting in more raw water for the Novaliches Portal, Maynilad explained.
“With a higher raw water allocation, Manila Water would be more comfortable with sustaining the cross-portal sharing arrangement with Maynilad,\” it said.
\”It will also increase the volume of raw water that reaches Maynilad’ s treatment plants, enabling us to suspend the daily service interruptions that [are] currently in place,\” the company added.
Maynilad said it will provide more updates in the coming days as it gave assurance that it has taken steps to mitigate the supply shortage.
