Coordination matters

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

In the first week of May, Iloilo City logged 569 heat-related illnesses, up from 355 the week before, as the heat index pushed toward 54 degrees Celsius.

In that same stretch, the Maasin Dam slid to red alert and the metro’s bulk water supply fell to 75.33 million liters per day, below the 80 MLD that counts as normal.

The pressure is not letting up, with the state weather bureau on April 22 flagging a 79 percent chance that El Niño emerges between June and August and lingers into early 2027.

The lesson Ilonggos keep relearning is that its water problem is not only a question of supply, but of coordination, and the renewed efforts of Iloilo City, Metro Iloilo Water District and Metro Pacific Iloilo Water to plan and speak as one with its water providers may matter more than ever.

On May 21, Mayor Raisa Treñas said the city government is intensifying coordination with the Metro Iloilo Water District and Metro Pacific Iloilo Water to plan around El Niño and turn projects into actual deliveries.

She directed the city to hand updated census data to the water firms so expansion plans keep pace with a metropolis now crowded with new investments, high-rise towers, and residential projects.

The stakes are spelled out in MPIW’s own figures, with the utility admitting a supply deficit of more than 100 MLD and non-revenue water losses running between 45 and 47 percent.

Its flagship answer, the HS Jaro pipe replacement, promises to cut losses in the district from about 70 percent to 20 percent and recover roughly 10 million liters a day, enough for some 5,000 households.

That project, launched at PHP 336 million in August 2024, has reached about 35 percent completion and now carries a September 2026 target, after the original contractor was dropped for poor workmanship and imported fittings were stalled by global supply snags.

One angle of the coordination story is MPIW securing round-the-clock work approval from the city in March, and its chief operating officer, Angelo David Berba, has asked the Department of Public Works and Highways and City Hall to help expedite the digging.

MPIW is not standing still, with modular desalination units rising at Nabitasan in La Paz and at Ateneo de Iloilo expected to add 2 million liters a day for about 2,000 households this quarter.

On the ground, the partnership already shows in small but real ways, from the city’s static water tanks now placed in Calaparan and Arevalo and in Hinactacan, La Paz, to assessment teams feeding supply data back to the utility.

Skeptics will note that they have heard versions of this cooperation pledge before, through hearings, presentations, and multibillion-peso roadmaps, while taps still sputter.

The expectations even diverge on paper what with differing targets and performance points.

That gap is exactly why communication here is not a soft courtesy but the hard infrastructure of trust.

This is the backdrop for an upcoming major water project that the mayor and senior Metro Pacific officials are expected to unveil together, a signal that both sides would rather be seen building than anything else.

The announcement will deserve applause, and it will be worth far more if it arrives with a shared, public dashboard of timelines, supply levels, and service targets that we can track.

Cooperation written into routines, data sharing, and plain public updates can outlast any problem.

Sustained communication and unified action must remain the standard operating procedure long after the El Niño heat fades.