By Bohol Sunday Post
The Cebu-Bohol water supply business is back in the talking points, but with Cebu in a less begging end.
Before Cebu resorts to Bohol’s abundance, Vice-Governor Gregorio Sanchez suggested that Cebuanos should check their backyard first to see the untapped water sources that experts saw.
With 120 rivers and several falls and springs, Cebu can meet the water requirement in the the island without tapping water from Bohol.
Cebu papers quoted the vice governor as saying that if Cebu can successfully generate water from these sources and add it to existing capacity, around 500,000 cubic meters will be made available to consumers every day which he said is even more than the demand.
According to the Metro Cebu Water District (MCWD) survey Metro Cebu has a total demand of 300,000 cubic meters daily for its 118,000 water subscribers spread from Liloan town in the north to Talisay City in the south.
Annual growth rate of the demand has been pegged at two to three percent.
The engineering works on pipelines network for the distribution of water to different parts of Metro Cebu can even be made easier if the Capitol’s Trans-axial Highway project would take off.
“No bidding has been held yet or fund source identified for the highway, estimated to cost P45 billion. It is supposed to run through the Cebu mountains from tip to tip, connecting north to south,†a Cebu paper reported.
Fierce objections by Boholanos and the expensive cost of water to consumers forced proponents to shelve off the Cebu-Bohol water deal in the 1990s.
The water source tapping issue resurrected after former president Fidel Ramos said Thursday last week that Cebu should look for alternative water sources and suggested, in a press conference, “that Cebu should revisit the proposal to pipe in water from Bohol province which he said was mothballed due to what he called as ‘cultural reasons’,†according to reports.
Governor Erico Aumentado, for his part, said he would fully support the Bohol-Cebu Water Supply Project if another company decides to pursue it on a build-operate-transfer scheme.
Aumentado, who was congressman when the project was pushed in the 1990s, said Cebu leaders should have collective decision whether or not to support the project to avoid problems.
He said foreign consortium, ANGLO and Kinhill Brown & Root, wanted to sell the water from Bohol’s Inabanga River at P23 per cubic meter even if the cost of extracting and bringing water to Cebu was P80 per cubic meter.
But talks were aborted as Cebu insisted on P14 per cubic meter, he said.
Aumentado had been mentioning that helping Cebu will also bounce back the development.
Moreover, he shares Ramos’ opinion that the project cost would lower when the Cebu-Bohol Friendship Bridge will already be there.
The 90-kilometer bridge being pushed by Aumentado will connect Cordova town on Mactan Island, Cebu and Getafe town in Bohol.
From P5.7 billion, the cost of the water supply project may go down to one billion pesos, since the pipes can pass through the bridge instead of submarine pipes.
Under the proposed Bohol-Cebu Water Supply Project, runoff water from Inabanga River would be brought to Cebu through a 30-km submarine cable from Bohol to Mactan Island, Cebu. Pumping stations in Mactan would be fed to pipelines and would distribute the water to the consumers in Metro Cebu.
MCWD’s raised a dilemma on the prices, considering that it was yet pegged at P60 to P70 per cubic meter in the ‘90s when the exchange rate was still P26 to a dollar. With higher value of dollar, today, the cost is expected to go higher.
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Topic: Cebu-Bohol Water Supply Business Is Back (Read 1533 times)