The waterless pay more

Start with the arithmetic, because the arithmetic is offensive. A household connected to Metro Pacific Iloilo Water pays a basic charge of PHP 28.67 per cubic meter after the phased increase that took full effect in March 2026. A household without a connection (and that’s roughly 74 percent of the concession area, by the Institute of Contemporary Economics’ count) buys trucked water at PHP 150 to PHP 250 per cubic meter. Five to nine times the utility rate. The families least able to afford water pay the most for it, and they’ve been paying that premium for years while the formal system delivered a fraction of what was promised.

The same review found MIBWSC delivering an estimated 30 to 50 MLD against a 170-MLD mandate. This isn’t a hostile outside audit; MPIW’s own chief operating officer has publicly acknowledged a supply deficit of more than 100 MLD and non-revenue water running between 45 and 47 percent. Nearly half the water that enters the pipes never reaches a paying customer.

The subsidence numbers tell a different story about blame. ICE traces Iloilo’s land subsidence (up to 8.8 millimeters a year in some districts) partly to groundwater pumping driven by unreliable formal supply. People drill because the tap fails them. The utility shortfall is, quite literally, sinking the city. And the roughly 22,000 ISF families along the waterways, close to a fifth of the population, are downstream of that failure, not the cause of it. ICE’s framework – upgrade in place first, relocate only from extreme-risk sites – deserves defending for that reason alone.

The proposal’s most interesting number, though, is PHP 30 billion. That’s the estimated capital saved by choosing a hybrid storage system (about PHP 50 billion) over a grey-dominant one (about PHP 80 billion). Wetlands, retention parks, and mangroves at PHP 5 to 18 million per million liters, against PHP 25 to 60 million for concrete. For once the environmental option wins on the spreadsheet, not the sentiment. The honest caveat: nature-based estimates run a wide band, 600 to 1,300 million liters. Even at the low end, the fiscal case holds. Barely, but it holds.

Which leaves the old Iloilo problem: finishing, not planning. The JICA flood master plan was never completed. The Jaro Floodway helped but left the basin logic half-built. The 2018 joint venture promised to rehabilitate and expand the distribution system; six years on, only about 20 percent of the city gets 24-hour service. ICE’s remedy is a Mayor-led task force using existing offices. Pragmatic, yes. But a task force tied to one term dies with the term. Somebody has to own this in year three.

None of this is abstract to the vendor in Lapuz paying some PHP 200 per cubic meter for delivered water, or the Jaro household drilling deeper each year as the ground drops a few millimeters beneath them. They’ve been coping while the institutions studied. ICE has done the studying part well. Coping was never supposed to be permanent policy.