In our country, conflicts over water resources and water-grabbing are occurring much more than in the past. There are attempts by government to manage the situation and in the past, El Niño had to happen before government saw the need for a national integrated approach. But as administrations come and go, so do appointed agencies. Lip service and finger pointing once problems emerge and blaming appears are not uncommon.

National government can safely provide a short-term assurance that the present water supply is sufficient but that water shortages in some parts of the country will occur particularly in highly urbanized cities like Metro Manila, which is among the world's top 10 users of groundwater, and Metro Cebu. In past pronouncements, DENR acknowledged that there are close to 20 million Filipinos or about one-fourth of the population, with no access to clean water and sanitation. Our river classification shows that only 51 percent meet cleanliness standards. These figures imply that all the rest of our rivers are polluted and that only 76 percent of the population has access to clean water and sanitation.

How do we presently access water?

For those who can afford bottled water at around PhP 30.00 per half liter, the attitude is to incorporate this expense as part of daily living. For those who cannot afford and can only contend with what is coming out of taps or wells, there is an acceptance of the potential consequences to our health. There is also a fervent prayer to the highest heavens that our physique, our immunity, and our accumulated bodily resistance will be sufficient to withstand the speculated assault of water-borne diseases. The problem has inculcated itself into our daily lives that it has ceased to be a problem; rather, it has become part of the givens in surviving in the Philippines.

In urban areas such as Metro Manila and areas with local water districts, water rationing has resulted in robust sales of plastic water storage containers ranging from the ubiquitous plastic timba in bathrooms (the bigger, the better) and the broadly-termed galons - ten-gallon containers and the larger plastic drums used to collect water bought from enterprising water vendors. Enterprising in this sense refers to the ability to tap illegally from private water sources, to not get caught by the authorities, and to sell this water to communities not serviced by concessionaires and who could probably not afford the monthly water service rates.

In communities outside urban areas, groundwater from dug wells and spring boxes are the main sources of drinking water. For farmers, rainfall and diverted water from rivers and lakes to irrigation canals and natural tributaries are the main sources of water for agriculture. For commercial industrial users, application of higher-end water extraction technology assures the powerful and unregulated suctioning of the required water volume.

And in a country annually beset by monsoon rains, tropical cyclones, storms, and typhoons, flooding is also a given. The problem is that flooding is now more frequent, more widespread, longer-lasting, and with higher depths.

How much water do we really have?

Asking this question today from government may not lead to direct and clear responses. What will be provided in lieu is a description of the country's water sources and outdated estimated availability and consumption.

• Our country has a total land area of 30 million hectares with 211 freshwater lakes, two large marshes, and a network of around 421 river basins or watersheds with areas ranging from 4,000 to 2.5 million hectares.
• Then there is an availability estimate, done in 1979 by the National Water Resources Council, of 142 million cubic meters (MCM) per day for groundwater and 833 MCM per day for surface water.
• Consumption is estimated also and tentatively put forward to indicate an 80 to 90 percent utilization range for sustainable groundwater and less than 20 percent for surface water.

Faced with outdated and imprecise data and information that can provide the real situation of the country's fresh water sources, there are various efforts outside government in the collection of data. Academic institutions, local water utilities, water concessionaires that supply and distribute water have established databases for their specific operations. However, the lack of a central repository to analyze and make the data available for planning and implementation of water resource-related programs diminish the value of these efforts.

Who is in charge of what?

Presidential Decree No. 1067, or the Water Code of the Philippines, is the policy framework that governs water, signed by then President Marcos on 31 December 1976. This executive issuance provided for the utilization, exploitation, development, conservation and protection of water resources subject to the control and regulation of the government through the National Water Resources Council. In time, this agency was transformed to the National Water Resources Board (NWRB) and during the term of President Fidel Ramos, the Presidential Task Force on Water Resource Development and Management was also formed to respond to the first onslaughts of El Nino in the country.

Watershed management is now primarily with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) but the administrative control of certain watersheds are taken over by other government agencies especially where these watersheds provide utility services such as geo-thermal and hydro-electric power generation, irrigation, water supply. As of 2000, there are 125 proclaimed watersheds with an area of around 1.5 million hectares.

The need to rationalize the management of the country's water resources under the NWRB resulted in the signing of Executive Order 123 in late 2002 appointing the DENR Secretary as Chair and transferring NWRB from the Department of Public Works and Highways to the Office of the President. NWRB is the coordinating and regulating body for all water resources-related development and is in charge of setting rates and tariffs of water districts. Planning and policy formulation within the water sector will now be lodged with a single government body, where before 36 agencies worked on water concerns. The plan is to transform this agency into a regular DENR bureau.

So what needs to be done?

Admitting that water is now an expensive commodity, even more expensive than gasoline, government is looking at four options to address the water conservation issue.

• Government could continue the existing approach where water is available to anyone without any cost
• Government could impose a raw-water price scheme as a resource charge
• Government could impose a price based on economic principles determined by the market
• Government could allow the trading of rights to water that is in one's backyard

This is in direct response to the government's 11-point program to meet the Millennium Development Goal of providing half of the country's population with access to clean water by 2015.

Hence, notwithstanding floods, droughts, and water shortages, shelling out money for any amount of raw water used is a price we will be paying for the degradation and destruction of the environment. Potentially, municipal and industrial water consumers will pay between 50 centavos to two pesos for every cubic meter of raw water, while agricultural users will pay between 40 to 65 centavos per cubic meter, depending on which of the proposed schemes the government would implement.

On the other end, how do we deal with rivers and esteros that mutated into garbage dumps, encroaching settlements and widening fishponds in major waterways, siltation from deforestation, soil erosion, over-pumping and indiscriminate well-drilling?

Increased forest cover and water management and regulation are universally-agreed solutions. The problem is how to go about implementing these solutions into workable action plans and the need to work with, and acknowledge, a diversity of management and accountabilities. We have a problem with water, its inconsistent availability, its lack, and its excess. But we have a bigger problem if we do not think there is a problem and no amount of wishing can wash the problem away.