Paper drought

The easy take on PAGASA’s latest forecast is that Iloilo’s biggest water project will arrive a year after the drought it was built for. That is half wrong and the wrong half matters.

PAGASA expects rainfall at 40 percent or less of normal across all five Western Visayas provinces in December, February, and March. Its Iloilo weather specialist, Ferdinand Rubin, was blunt on Sept. 29 as he warned of a looming water crisis.

The Jalaur High Dam in Calinog is not late. It hit its 109-meter design height in November 2023. It began catching water in May 2024, and by November 2025, the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) reported it held about 19.5 million cubic meters.

The paperwork is what is late. NIA admitted in July that it was still studying a government-to-government deal for the bulk-water component. The memorandum of agreement remained unfinished. Metro Pacific Water then announced a Jalaur treatment plant for 86 million liters a day (MLD) in September. They gave no completion date.

The dam in Calinog holds enough water to get the city through March 2027. But without a signed contract, not a single drop will reach our taps.

Farmers are getting some of it now. NIA says the project augments irrigation on 10,336 hectares. One hundred forty-nine Calinog farmers planted a third rice crop for the first time. That matters.

The city is different. Metro Pacific Iloilo Water (MPIW) estimated in May that pipe repairs could recover 10 MLD. A modular desalination unit could add 2 MLD. But during the last El Niño in May 2024, the city’s supply dropped by 26 MLD.

Twelve against 26.

The bigger fixes will arrive too late for this season. That includes a desalination plant pegged at 150 MLD in 2025 and 66.5 MLD this September. The actual size depends on which press release we read.

The gap will be filled from the ground. It always is. We have made a reluctant peace with this reality. A UP Resilience Institute study found parts of Mandurriao, Molo, and La Paz sinking by 4.0 to 8.8 millimeters a year. Geologist Fernando Siringan points to groundwater extraction as the culprit. He presented data on 1,226 wells across six coastal barangays to back it up.

He asked a decisive question at a city forum on Sept. 28: “What can people do if there is no water supplied to them?”

They pump and they will do harder this dry season. Coastal Iloilo City will pay for it with sinking ground and saltier wells for years.

Speed comes with a bill. Any emergency water allocation from Jalaur to city taps comes straight from the reservoir NIA promised to farmers for those exact months. Farmers deserve to hear that from NIA before March. They should not discover it at the canal.

The region is not asleep. The Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council reactivated its El Niño Team on June 9 and asked member agencies for action plans.

We have seen this before when Iloilo City declared a state of calamity over water in April 2024.

This leaves a few questions for NIA, MPIW, and Metro Iloilo Water District. When will you sign the bulk-water agreement? Can any Jalaur water reach an existing treatment plant before March? At what supply level does rationing begin? Which barangays go first?

And for the council: How many member agencies actually submitted those plans?

The water is trapped in the reservoir until someone finally signs a deal.