Filipino residents stand with water containers during a protest against high water prices, in a street in Manila, yesterday.
MANILA: Groundwater in the Philippines may be depleted by the year 2050, a University of the Philippines professor said in a report based on a study that started in 2006.
After simulating effects of high temperature and low precipitation in a shallow aquifer in Bay, Laguna, engineer Victor Ella said in his report that groundwater levels are incrementally declining, starting at an average of 0.10785 metre per decade, as yearly precipitation
decreases.
“This could mean that by the end of 2050, groundwater levels are likely to decrease by 0.43138 metre, 0.45143 metre and 0.45177 metre if rainfall decreases by 0, 10 and 20 percent, respectively,” Ella said, citing his pioneering experiment on the century-old aquifer.
The Bay aquifer supplied water for irrigation and domestic uses with 15 metre-thick layers of clay, fine sand and coarse sand.
Ella explained that he tracked changes in the climate using air temperature scenarios drawn up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He attributed this to the trend in the current decade that has seen annual precipitation lower than that of the three previous decades, which affects the pumping rate and the design and implementation of shallow tube wells that supply water
to farms.
The Philippine star
