ILOILO City – A 1998 study on Philippine water resource management identified Iloilo as one of the country’s water critical areas hence both the government and private sectors took initiative to address this challenge.
A three-year collaborative project entitled “Installation of the telemetry sensors to monitor water quality and water levels in 22 wells” headed by the Ateneo de Manila University and funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and National Water Resources Board (NWRB) kicked off with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday at Pavia National High School in Iloilo’s Pavia town.
After the ceremony, another sensor was installed at Pagsanga-an Elementary School of the said municipality.
These telemetry sensor network systems are two of the four sensors installed in the province – the other two are located in San Miguel town.
“Through these installed sensors we would be able to get real-time information on various (water) parameters, primarily quantity and quality,” DOST secretary Fortunato de la Peña said in a press conference.
Classified under the Climate Change Infrastructure Initiative Program of the DOST-Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development, de la Peña has seen this project as timely as the country is “facing challenges when it comes to water resources and accessibility of water to the population.”
He cited that ground water reservoir provides more than 50 percent of the potable water requirement and 85 percent of pipe water supply in the country.
The increasing population and climate change put a lot of pressure on water supply, including ground water, he added.
Meanwhile, NWRB executive director Sevillo David Jr. said “to know more about the blind resource, we set up in strategic locations a ground water monitoring well primarily to observe the characterization of the ground water beneath a specific area.”
The agencies involved are therefore immersing with the select areas to obtain the data needed for analysis.
The water parameters that will be monitored by the telemetry sensors include static water level for the quantity and power of hydrogen, temperature and electrical conductivity for quality.
Pavia, being an “abundant” source of ground water was considered a “viable” location for the project.
De la Peña further stated this initiative serves as the first step to effectively assess, conserve, manage and monitor the county’s ground resources.
“Hopefully, the technology can be developed and further refined in such a way that the instrumentation to be used can be produced in a lower cost so that even ordinary-sized LGUs (local government units) can already install their own. This is one way of addressing the problem we already have and can be a potentially big problem on water supply, particularly with our growing population,” he said./PN
