Butuan City councilors question water utility’s projects

BUTUAN CITY, Philippines – A city councilor has alleged that the design of the more than P100-million infiltration gallery that the Butuan City Water District (BCWD) had built was faulty, causing the lack of potable water supply for the city’s over 200,000 residents.

Councilor Ryan Anthony Culima, who chairs the city council’s committee of public utilities, along with his colleagues, visited the BCWD’s infiltration gallery in Sitio Iyao, Barangay Anticala last Monday and asked why a huge water reservoir that would serve as siltation pond was not built.

“Per our observations there in Iyao, there is a huge source of water in Taguibo River, enough to supply water to more than 200,000 Butuan City residents, but we are now experiencing a water crisis because there is no water that comes out from our faucets because of the faulty design of the costly infiltration gallery,” Culima told newsmen.

Last July, Councilor Sergio Pascual, chairman of the committee on cooperatives, called for an investigation of the BCWD management due to a looming water crisis, saying the more than P100 million that the BCWD got as loan from the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) then chaired by former Surigao del Sur congressman Prospero Pichay was allegedly a huge waste of money. 

“Until now, we, the water consumers of Butuan City, are paying for this loan as the loan money spent in constructing that substandard and faulty design of expensive water infiltration was passed on to us, making our water rates the highest in Mindanao” Pascual said.

Aside from the infiltration gallery, the BCDA also got another P300-million loan from LWUA for the construction of a water treatment facility which Pascual and Culima described as allegedly another useless project because there is no water to treat and if there is water, it is muddy because of the supposedly faulty infiltration gallery.

“This is another headache to the water consumers of Butuan City because the more than P300 million loaned for the useless water treatment facility is again passed on to consumers,” Pascual said.

In an earlier interview, BCWD general manager Anselmo Sangtian said the LWUA loans have been transferred to the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), which had paid them in full and for which the BCWD would amortize with the DBP. The BCWD would collect the money from its consumers in their monthly billings.

A check with the DBP showed that the BCWD loans have ballooned to nearly P1 billion. “This makes Butuan City’s water rates the highest in Mindanao because payments of these loans are passed on to the consumers,” Culima said. 

Meanwhile, water consumers here have also called for an investigation into a public-private partnership contract that the BCWD has supposedly entered for another water treatment and impounding project costing P500 million, alleging that there have been no consultations on this.