Smart triage

The General Services Office’s latest report offers some relief: water volume across Iloilo City’s shallow wells remains stable. With PAGASA projecting a strong El Niño stretching into the first half of 2027, Engr. Neil Ravena and his team are making the right call by moving early to test more than 1,000 wells in 25 vulnerable barangays.

Checking the water table before the worst of the dry spell hits is responsible crisis management. Looking at public schools with wider footprints as backup community water hubs also shows a city government actively mapping out contingencies rather than waiting for taps to run dry.

Still, proactive testing is only the first step. The harder part is confronting what those tests — and the science beneath our feet — are already telling us.

Volume is only half the equation. As Ravena rightly noted, dropping water levels can draw “dirty water” and seawater into underground supplies. In October, several communal wells failed laboratory tests and were recommended for condemnation even after chlorination. If standard treatment cannot clear the contamination in shared wells, the city needs an immediate backup plan for households whose primary water source fails the lab test tomorrow.

We also have to be careful not to solve a seasonal drought by creating a permanent geological problem.

Coastal geologist Fernando Siringan’s mapping of 1,226 wells in six coastal barangays, alongside a 2024 University of the Philippines Resilience Institute study showing parts of Mandurriao, Molo, and La Paz sinking by 4.0 to 8.8 millimeters a year, should serve as our guardrail. Over-extracting groundwater during a prolonged El Niño invites saltwater intrusion and land subsidence. Once salt ruins an aquifer, it stays brackish for decades.

So how do we bridge the gap between emergency readiness and long-term water security?

First, treat the GSO’s laboratory testing not as a routine check, but as a triage map. Every well that fails quality standards or shows rising salinity should automatically put that neighborhood at the front of the line for mobile water tankers and subsidized bulk water deliveries.

Second, turn public schools into rainwater hubs rather than groundwater pumps. Ravena is spot-on that schools have wide areas — which makes their expansive rooftops ideal for commercial-grade rainwater harvesting and storage cisterns. Setting up modular filtration and storage tanks in schools costs a fraction of rehabilitating a sunken road or paying PHP 15,000 in hospital bills for waterborne illness, while sparing the aquifer underneath.

Third, use the city’s Climate and Disaster Risk Assessment to fast-track piped surface water. The 25 flagged barangays shouldn’t have to rely on hand pumps in a modern metropolis where commercial districts enjoy uninterrupted supply. City Hall can work with water concessionaires to waive or subsidize connection fees — often around PHP 5,000 per household — and lay temporary community standpipes fed by treated river water while permanent mains are built.

Testing the wells gives us critical data. What we do the moment a well fails the test will determine how safely Iloilo City weathers 2027.