UP to the 1980s, I still fondly remember the times when our band of boys would reconnoiter the water canals of our town in Padre Garcia, Batangas. We considered those canals as part of our childhood adventures. Yes, the water canals in those times were not yet the sewers of today. Those were the days of our community bathing and washing laundry in public. Flowing from the spring-fed rivers and streams of Mt. Malarayat, the water was pristine and clear, not potable but worthy enough for other needs of the community. School-day afternoons, during our gardening class, brought most of us boys marching towards the nearby irrigation canal to fetch water by the plastic gallons and pails to water our vegetable gardens. The cool water seduced most of us to set aside our pails and take the time to jump naked in the water and play. This would drive our teachers mad, enough to give us an occasional whip of the stick or a pinch on the ear to drive in our young skulls the lesson that we were there to fetch water as part of our gardening class and not to bathe as if we were all on a resort vacation.
For drinking water, we fetched water from the community artesian well by joining a long queue and hauling the two pails of water perched on both ends of a bamboo pole. Some able-bodied men made a living as the town’s most sought-after water carriers. They were paid for every pail of water they brought to every home.
The water canals of my town were deeply intertwined with every family’s daily life.
Eventually, progress happened. The municipal government decided to undertake the project of distributing water for the community. A bigger water pump together with the town’s big municipal elevated water tank provided piped water to every household capable of paying for potable water. Everyone welcomed this progress as it freed the community of the time and effort which before then had been dedicated to fetching water. Consequently, the community abandoned the practice of washing clothes and bathing publicly in the town’s water canals. The use of the water canals, aside from irrigating the rice fields, was abandoned and stopped altogether.
As time went by, the community and the succeeding generations became disaffected with the water canals as the community saw these canals with less utility to them as they had before. Through the years, disaffection led to neglect. Neglect led to abuse and pollution.
As the town’s population increased, waste management and disposal became the major problem. Sadly, the community that once bathed in these canals decided to utilize the water canals as sewers. What was once a caring and affectionate relationship between the community and the water canals turned into abuse and utter disaffection that turned into the water canals’ destruction. It was a caring love affair that turned into monstrous abuse.
Those beautiful days are gone. What we have today are water canals, not with pristine clear water, but reeking with the revolting stench of human and industrial waste. While the municipal and barangay water districts brought piped water to homes, the scarcity of water is a pressing problem nationwide. The piped water was envisioned to bring potable water to everyone. But as it turned out, the poor quality of the water and the bad distribution service forced all of us to buy much more expensive filtered bottled water. For the entire country, it is always a warning not to drink from the tap. Doing so can be fatal as waterborne diseases such as amoebiasis, cholera and others can easily be contracted. Our water infrastructure became billions worth of business which cannot even guarantee the health and safety of all Filipinos paying for them. If we compare the state of things a few decades back and the state of things today, one can wonder if the much-vaunted development and progress truly happened. Our water security simply turned worse.
Filipinos of today’s generation envy countries such as Japan where the water canals are still so clean for schools of fish to thrive. But we must all be reminded that our water canals were once beautiful and clean. Our leaders had totally squandered the opportunity to improve the nation’s water security. The Department of Environment, which is the primary steward of the national patrimony under our Constitution, failed miserably in protecting and conserving the most important life source we have — water.
Water has destroyed humanity in the biblical sense. In the present and in the future, humanity is destroying and will destroy itself by poisoning the very water that gives us all life. Let us stop this self-destructive stupidity.
