Previous Story
Perennial water crisis
|
Posted on Mar 28 2000
At Issue: Perennial water shortage that adversely affects most residential and business establishments here.
Our View: Must find alternative means to providing such basic necessity for the entire community.
Conventional water sources are usually depleted during the drought season. It means water hours for regular recipients and almost no water at all for some residential areas such as Gualo Rai, Kanat Tabla and Garapan.
Indeed, it is a perennial problem that warrants resolution beyond conventional water sources. The so-called desalination or reverse osmosis may be an expensive proposition, but it seems the only alternative for an island that has seen expansion in its residential and business sectors.
Some of the wells have been shut down because they no longer produce at least usable water.
Usable water isn’t potable water. The latter is drinkable. The idea of digging more wells in depleted water aquifer isn’t going to produce more of this basic necessity. In other words, more wells isn’t the answer. The source is the same–depleted water lenses.
Islands, anywhere in the Pacific, have small water lenses. Such is the dire reality that islanders must deal with as their island community expands. But these isles are surrounded with salt water it could filter through a desalination system that provide for the need of its community. It’s an expensive system, but the only realistic approach to resolving perennial water crisis here.
The only other alternative for potable water is to establish a revolving fund for families to borrow and build water catchments. This was done during the Japanese time rather successfully and we still see these tanks in various dwellings throughout the island.
Families who rebuilt them–half of which is underground–never run out of potable water even during the longest drought season.
We hope the once scrapped desalination proposal is revived for there really isn’t any other alternative given that our water lenses are either depleted or run dangerously low especially during the drought season. It’s a perennial problem that need not be turned into an endless debate. It must be addressed and resolved once and for all. Si Yuus Maase`!
