Quezon City--- Apart from the provision of safe potable water supply, the country's water districts should also more actively involved themselves in the development of wasterwater facilities and improvement of the people's access to adequate sanitation especially in the urban centers in the countryside to curb environmental pollution and the prevalence of waterborne diseases.

This was stressed in a paper presented by Administrator Lorenzo H. Jamora and Engr. Jose Rene Roncesvalles of the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) during an international water resource management conference held in Dumaguete City recently. In the paper titled, " The Role of the Water Districts in Urban Sanitation in the Light of the Philippine Millennium Development Goals", Jamora and Roncesvalles said that the water districts are obligated to be involved in improving sanitation in their areas of concern since this is part of their mandate under Presidential Decree No. 198, as amended and in view of the recent promulgation of the Clean Water Act.

The LWUA paper said that urban sanitation is a serious challenge faced by developing countries like the Philippines where more than 50 percent of the population already live in urbanized areas which lacked municipal sewerage systems. It also acknowledged the huge disparity in the level of public investments for water supply a against sanitation where it said that spending for development of sewerage and sanitation facilities only constitute less than two percent of that spent for the development of water supply systems across the country.

Water districts assisted by LWUA have benefited from much of the public investments for water supply. Yet though the water districts are mandated to handle wastewater disposal as well, benefits have been mostly enjoyed by the water supply sector and very little extended towards the development of wastewater systems by water districts, the paper said. The main constraint in public sector investment for sanitation has been the comparatively higher cost in the development of wastewater treatment and sewerage facilities that is more than double that of normally required for water supply. This could be the reason why public access to safe potable water has improved tremendously over the past 30 years while access to basic sanitation has remained stagnant.

In view of the higher cost in the development of wastewater treatment and sewerage facilities and considering that in the absence of municipal sewerage systems most of the urban households rely mainly on septic tanks as a means of treating household wastewater, the LWUA paper advocated for septage and sewerage management where the water districts and the local government could cooperate in assisting the individual households in the proper design, construction and maintenance of their septic tanks.

The Philippine Millennium Development Goals call for among others the provision of safe potable water to 90 percent of all Filipinos and halving of the country's population that lacks access to basic sanitation facilities by 2015.
c November 04, 2006