The bill seeking the creation of the Department of Water Resources has reached the Senate plenary after Senator Grace Poe sponsored the measure.
Poe, in endorsing Senate Bill No. 2771 or the proposed “National Water Resources Management Act,” sponsored the bill’s Committee Report No. 281, which seeks the creation of a separate government agency whose primary task is to solve the decades-long challenge of reforming the water sector.
“The root of our water crisis, however, is actually a crisis in regulation. The problem is not that we don't have resources, but we do not effectively manage our resources,” Poe said in her sponsorship speech.
“We have the abundant water supply to get ourselves out of this water crisis: 421 river basins; 59 natural lakes; over 100,000 hectares of freshwater swamps; 20.2 billion cubic meters per year of groundwater potential; and 2,400 millimeters of average rainfall throughout the year,” she noted.
But due to a lack of a masterplan, the country’s water sector “operated like flawed and aging water pipes.”
“Our pipes have been laid down in a haphazard manner, just like our water sector which has overlapping agencies and fragmented management,” Poe said.
“Without a clear framework to guide us, solutions have been limited to rearranging pipes and patching up leaks,” she said.
Establishing a single agency that would regulate the country’s water sector will help “untangle the messy bureaucracy” of the said sector.
Under the proposed bill, the proposed Department of Water shall develop the National Water Resources Management Plan which will provide the strategies and work that has to be done to achieve water security.
It shall establish a water resources data center and coordinate with all agencies on resource inventory, research, and data-sharing.
The department’s main duty would be to cultivate the country’s water resources and ensure that everyone will have a proper supply.
The bill also proposes the creation of the National Water Sector Policy Council composed of the heads of the Department of Water Resources, National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), Department of Health (DOH), Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Department of Budget and Management (DBM), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Office of the President and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).
Aside from this, the Water Regulatory Commission shall be established as an independent quasi-judicial body alongside the department.
The said Commission shall be in charge of regulating all water service providers, from water supply, distribution, and bulk water sourcing to sanitation and sewerage services.
“Through these reforms, we create key centralized institutions with clear mandates and responsibilities yet unified in the goal of attaining universal access to safe, adequate, affordable, and sustainable water supply, and improved sewerage and sanitation services,” she said.