Joint House panel OKs bill creating water department

A joint panel of the House of Representatives has approved a substitute bill consolidating 35 House bills seeking to create the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and Water Regulatory Commission (WRC).

The Committee on Government Reorganization and Committee on Public Works and Highways both approved on November 12 the unnumbered substitute bill.

The committee chairs noted the urgency and importance of the substitute measure given the issues plaguing the water supply in Metro Manila and the directives of President Rodrigo Duterte.

"Our agenda is very timely due to the recent and continuing water crisis which is being experienced by the residents of Metro Manila and nearby provinces," said Rep. Ramon Guico, who represented the highways committee and co-presided the hearing with Rep. Mario Vittorio Marino, chairman of the reorganization committee.

The DWR shall be the primary national agency to implement Presidential Decree No. 1067, otherwise known as the Water Code of the Philippines, and Republic Act No. 9275, otherwise known as the Philippine Clean Water Act of 2004.

Its creation shall ensure that there is a government body responsible and accountable for all aspects of water resource management, including the development of dams and other infrastructure, the harvest of water, and the management of the waste water system.

The measure also provides for the creation of the Water Regulatory Commission, which shall serve as an independent, quasi-judicial regulatory body under the administrative supervision of the DWR as an attached agency.

The DWR will essentially be in charge of resource management while the WRC will be focused on economic regulation, according to Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda, who sponsored the bill at the November 12 hearing and is an author of one of the substituted measures.

The new department's attached agencies will include the Metropolitan Waterworks Sewerage System, Local Water Utilities Administration, Laguna Lake Development Authority, Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission, and National Irrigation Administration.

Meanwhile, in a presentation on November 14 on the government's water management plans, Engr. Susan P. Abaño, chief of the policy and program division of the National Water Resources Board (NWRB,) acknowledged that water supply in several areas across the Philippines has reached "critical" levels and welcomed the move to create a department of water as a way to address the water shortage.

Currently, the NWRB, the national coordinating and regulating agency on water resources management and development under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, oversees the country's water resources.

The plan is to have the 32 water-related agencies placed under one parent agency, Abaño said.

She noted that the Philippines' total water resources amount to 146 billion cubic meters (m3), broken down into 125.8 billion m3 of surface water and 20.2 billion m3 of groundwater. The annual average rainfall is 2,400 millimeters, and the country has 421 principal rivers and 79 lakes. (PhilExport)