MANILA, Philippines - Just last week, residents of Metro Manila were scrambling for water.

Corazon Aragon, who cleans tombstones for a living at Manila’s North Cemetery is one of them. Every day, she buys 15 containers of water and shares it with 11 other household members for bathing, because they don’t have their own water meter.

“’Pag wala kaming pera, minsan hinihintay namin ang ulan. Lalabas namin ang timba para mapuno tapos doon na rin kami maliligo,” Corazon’s son, Toto said.

The whole of Metro Manila including Maynilad customers experienced the water crisis. According to Maynilad, the water supply from Angat Dam has been reduced because of the prolonged dry season this year. Although 97 percent of the water supply in Metro Manila comes from the dam, the water crisis cannot be solely rooted from the dam’s low level.

While others conserve every drop of water, Karen Davila and The Correspondents team found a community squandering water away.

Jojo (not his real name), a member of the said community, does not pay any water bills. But he enjoys uninterrupted water supply, since he started to illegally tap water. He showed The Correspondents team the hidden pipe connection from his faucet to the water pipes. He said the connection was made while Maynilad workers were repairing the road and underground pipes 5 years ago.

“Noong tinabunan na nila ‘yong tubo nila sementado na, na hindi na talaga mabubuksan ulit, ‘tsaka namin nilinya ulit papunta sa mga bahay,” Jojo said in an interview with The Correspondents.

His neighbors, aware that illegal tapping was a criminal offense, took advantage of the water connection, instead of reporting it to the authorities.

Even though Jojo knows what they are doing is wrong, he said, “Eh anong magagawa namin eh kung kailangan din namin ng tubig.”

Informal settlers along railways in Tutuban also tapped water from Maynilad water pipes to survive. After they were relocated, traces of illegal water tapping remained in the area. Hoses and pipes were left scattered and half of the grassy area, the size of a football field, was submerged in ankle-high water that leaked from pipes broken by the illegal water connections.

“System losses”
Because of these illegal water connections, 890 million liters of water leak from Maynilad water pipes daily.

“Kung ang ating systems losses ay hindi ganito kataas, hindi magiging ganito ang epekto sa atin, kaya nga tuloy-tuloy ginagawa ang pag-repair ng leaks,” Maynilad spokesperson Cherubim Ocampo said.

To reduce these systems losses, Maynilad engineers now use the Sahara Leak Detection System that has a spectrogram that can detect the audible range of withdrawal and video sensors that can identify the insides of the pipes and verify withdrawal or leaks. The system is also used to detect old and forgotten pipelines.

Aside from this, the government and the private sector are looking for ways to conserve water and alternative sources of water.

The Correspondents team went to a treatment plant in Putatan, Muntinlupa that recycles water from the biggest lake in the country, Laguna Lake, where people dispose all kinds of dirt and wastes.

Paul Ashdown of Pall Industries saw the potential of Laguna Lake as a source of drinking water.

He said water from Laguna Lake flies down the pipeline into a machine that uses air to separate the dirt and water. Once the water has been filtered, it goes through microfiltration and reverse osmosis before it can be deemed as clean drinking water.

Filtered water from this treatment plant passed the Philippine national standards for drinking water.

The P1 billion-worth treatment plant, which was built in 2008, recycles a 100 million liters of water a day.