Manila Water now serves more than 7.4 million

Manila Water continues to expand its service coverage in the East Zone as it now counts 1,132,976 water service connections as of June 2022. This translates to 7.4 million residents in the eastern part of Metro Manila and the entire province of Rizal receiving world-class water and wastewater services.

Of these total number of connections, 95% or 1,077,017 are domestic customers while 5% or 54,399 are commercial and industrial customers.

In almost 10 years, service connections increased by 21% as there were only 896,148 water service connections in the East Zone by end of 2012, covering 6.2 million population.

“While Manila Water is committed to continue to upgrade existing and construct new facilities to ensure service continuity in the East Zone, it is more critical to search and develop alternative water sources to be able to meet the ever-increasing demand in our service area,” Manila Water President and CEO Jocot De Dios shared.

Ensuring water security

According to De Dios, Manila Water continues to closely work with the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) and the National Water Resources Board (NWRB) in developing new water sources even as the agencies have approved the implementation of the much-needed interim additional sources to address the increasing demand.

Currently under construction is the East Bay Water Treatment Plant (WTP) that will draw water from the eastern part of Laguna Lake, considered the cleanest portion of the lake. The East Bay WTP is part of the East Bay Water Supply System Project that seeks to expand Manila Water’s services to more towns in Rizal Province.

Components of the Php 2.7B WTP project include an eight-million-liter (8 ML) capacity reservoir, an intake structure, pumping station, and Water Treatment plant using Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) system, multi-media and granular activated carbon (GAC) filters as well as Reverse Osmosis system.

“We need to ensure that we are able to provide the same quality of service to all our customers, no matter how exponentially their number grows. This means continuously investing into water security and service continuity projects, such as building new water treatment plants and upgrading our distribution system,” De Dios added.