by Luz Rimban

IN LATE 1997, while preparing for arrival of the El Niño phenomenon that would bring in an unusually long dry season, government officials were at a loss over how to allocate the water in Angat Dam in Bulacan.

Angat has always been used to supply water to Metro Manila and to irrigate the 27,000 hectares of farmland in Bulacan. But rainfall in 1998 was expected to decrease by 60 percent, and the water level at the dam was predicted to fall to critically low levels. There was no way that the water from the Angat Dam could be enough for both the Metro Manilans and the farmers of Bulacan.

The government's Task Force El Niño made a painful decision: cut off water for irrigation - the first time this would happen since the operation of Angat in the 1960s - and channel all of the water to Metro Manila's 10 million people.

To offset the loss to farmers, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System agreed to provide them compensation packages, while the National Irrigation Authority promised them jobs working on canals and ditches. In 1998, rice harvests dropped by some 30 percent and peasant families in Bulacan suffered drastic cuts in their incomes. The farmers did get temporary work, but today, two years later, they have yet to receive compensation.

In just a few months, though, El Niño will be visiting the country once more, and Bulacan's farmers could be looking at another season without water for their fields. Deciding who gets water in times of scarcity is a political, economic and environmental dilemma, even if the law provides cut-and-dried choices. Agriculture is the biggest user of water in the Philippines, but the 1974 Water Code says it should give way to domestic and municipal uses in times of emergency. This means that when water is scarce, what limited supply there is goes to the water providers - the water districts and concessionaries - who in turn distribute them to their network of consumers.

But the law does not guarantee equitable distribution of water. Among domestic users, water goes first to the well-off - business and industrial establishments and upper- and middle-class communities with water service connections provided by the water utilities. Those excluded from this network - mainly the urban poor - are left to the mercy of water vendors who charge exorbitant rates and usually draw water from illegal connections.

In a way, the poor lose at least twice to the rich in the race for water. Not only are the have-nots generally unserved by legitimate water suppliers that concentrate on the haves, the country's dwindling water supply is also partly due to the unregistered deep wells of the moneyed class and the rampant thievery of commercial and industrial users, whose illegal water connections have been leaving other areas bone dry.

National Water Resources Board (NWRB) executive director Hector Dayrit points out that according to the Water Code, all water resources, whether groundwater, surface water or sea water, belong to the state. It is the NWRB that is supposed to regulate the use of such water outside that of the two Metro Manila concessionaires - Manila Water Corporation and Maynilad Water Services Inc. - and the 500 water districts nationwide.

Except for single-family households that are mandated only to register their wells and pumps, everyone else must not only register their pumps but also pay for the water drawn from the ground. The NWRB charges a base rate of P500 a year plus set amounts for every liter-per-second (lps) of groundwater consumed.

The general theory, explains Dayrit, is that all high-rise buildings have their own deep wells, not to mention every home in plush subdivisions with a swimming pool. But a weak NWRB has been unable to monitor the installation of deep wells and pumps, and therefore regulate groundwater extraction. Since its inception in 1974, the NWRB has issued water permits to a little less than 16,000 grantees nationwide.

Then there are the leaks and thefts that plague the country's water providers. In water utility jargon, these leaks and thefts are called "non-revenue water." The Metro Cebu Water District, for instance, has a non-revenue rate of 38 percent, which means that it is able to bill only 62 percent of the water it distributes. Still, this has gone down from 45 percent in 1991. The Davao City Water District has a lower rate of 31 percent.

The non-revenue water figure almost doubles in Metro Manila. As of June 2000, Manila Water, concessionaire for Metro Manila's east zone, was losing 54 percent of its water to thefts and leakages; Maynilad, which operates the older and much bigger west zone, was losing 65 percent or almost two-thirds. One reason could be the high number of industrial firms located in Metro Manila, which hosts 69 percent of the total 15,000 in the country. Both concessionaires say that factories are among those believed to be stealing water. Other big water users such as high-rise condominiums, schools and government buildings, multinational corporations and the retail sector - shopping malls and department stores -are also being investigated for theft.