A long hot summer is almost here and, with it, a shortage of water. The Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) has already warned the public that the water level behind Angat Dam is below normal, reduced the amount of water flowing from Angat to La Mesa Dam and asked Metro Manila residents to conserve water or else their faucets would run dry. This happens almost every summer, by the way, although parts of Metro Manila and Central Luzon are flooded during the rainy season. In fact, after Typhoon ?Ondoy,? there was so much water behind several dams in Central Luzon that they had to open the gates to let more water out before the dams break. It is this extra water from the dams that is believed to have flooded Central Luzon and Metro Manila to unusually very high levels. And yet, only a few months later, the MWSS tells us that there is not enough water in the reservoirs and there would be a lack of water this summer.

The water lack comes as surely as the long dry season comes around March, yet the MWSS and other water agencies do not do anything either to conserve water that is plentiful during the wet season or to make use of reservoirs that are already there brimming with water.

I am referring to Wawa Dam in Rodriguez (formerly Montalban), Rizal. The MWSS itself tells us that Wawa is good for at least 50 million liters of water per day (MLD). That is enough to fill up the expected shortage this summer, but for some strange reason, the MWSS and the National Water Resources Board (NWRB) refuse to allow, for the last 13 years, San Lorenzo Ruiz Builders, which owns the water rights of Wawa, to harness it and start water flowing again to La Mesa Dam only four kilometers away. San Lorenzo is willing to spend for it; the government will not spend a single peso, but our water agencies play deaf and dumb, other media outlets play deaf and dumb and Malacañang has been playing deaf, dumb and blind. For 13 years, I was a voice lost in the wilderness crying ?Harness Wawa Dam, Harness Wawa Dam!? Wawa, after all, was the lone supplier of water to Manila from 1908. In 1968, when Angat Dam was finished, Wawa was decommissioned. But the supply from Angat is no longer sufficient, so why not harness Wawa again, I kept saying, to supply the expected shortages every summer?

Happily, last Saturday, another voice, also in the Inquirer, made the same cry. He was Reynaldo G. Geronimo, a partner of the Romulo Mabanta Buenaventura Sayoc and De Los Angeles law firm, who wrote that Wawa ?is still structurally sound and needs only some repairs that can be done immediately.?

I also received a letter from Oscar I. Violago, president and CEO of San Lorenzo Builders and Developers Group Inc. (SLBDGI), saying that the water volume of its Wawa Dam Project is not limited to 50 MLD, as MWSS makes it appear.

?TGGI engineers, one of the accredited technical consultants recommended by NWRB, validated water flows at Wawa River of at least 16.64 CMS or approximately 1500 MLD,? Violago wrote. ?TGGI?s findings only confirmed previous studies conducted by Picorem, Electrowatt Engineering, Knight-Piesold, Bureau of Research Standards and even CTI Consultants, the firm engaged by MWSS in 2005 to make a study of the Wawa Dam Project. This can be further increased with engineering improvements and reforestation programs.?

The existing dam can produce from 50 to 80 MLD, and can be rehabilitated in less than eight months, Violago said. More small dams will be built upstream of the existing dam to increase their holding capacity. The first of these will have a height of 45 meters, Violago said, and can be built within 18 months and will have a capacity of 500 MLD.

?If the Boso-Boso Dam will simultaneously be built, the capacity will be increased to 900 MLD,? Violago continued. ?Wawa Dam?s full water production of 1500 MLD can be operational within four years.?

The transmission cost will be much less since Wawa is only four kilometers from La Mesa Dam, with an existing right of way, and the implementation lead time is much shorter than that of Laiban Dam in Tanay which is being proposed by San Miguel Corp. Laiban is 70 km away, requiring 30 km of tunnels.

Water production of Wawa and Laiban?s watersheds are almost the same, Violago continued. Wawa?s watershed is 27,700 hectares, almost the same as Laiban?s 28,000 hectares. The watersheds are beside each other and have the same rainfall patterns and weather conditions.

Furthermore, the Wawa Dam Project has tremendous advantages over Laiban, Violago claimed. It can be operational within a year. On the other hand, Laiban?s proponents say they will need at least five years just to relocate the squatters inside Laiban?s future reservoir. (The Japan Bank of International Cooperation says that, from its experience, it would take 10 years.)

From Laiban?s own timetable, had it started activities in 2007, it would be operational by 2015 or in eight years, Violago wrote. ?It is now 2010. The earliest it can be operational, optimistically, would be 2017.?

Wawa Dam, unlike Laiban, can be undertaken by stages, dependent on the requirements of the concessionaires, so that there would not be any take-or-pay provisions from MWSS? two water concessionaires, Manila Water and Maynilad Water, Violago continued. If MWSS succeeds in imposing a ?take or pay? provision on 1900 MLD on its concessionaires regardless of whether or not they need this huge volume of water immediately, then the price to their consumers would triple immediately. This would burden Metro Manila residents.

Moreover, Wawa Dam?s investment requirements can be staggered and be more manageable over several years, instead of a one-time outflow, Violago said.