BACOLOD CITY, Philippines — A severe supply deficit has triggered widespread interruptions across the City of Smiles, highlighting fragile local utility systems during peak summer heat. Roughly 40 percent of consumers served by the Bacolod City Water District (BACIWA)-PrimeWater joint venture are suffering from low pressure to total water service loss.
The compounding crisis has forced city hall and the utility to rapidly deploy emergency deep wells and mobile storage units to protect highly vulnerable urban neighborhoods.
The ongoing dry spell has severely depleted local water tables, leaving the joint-venture utility unable to meet everyday household and commercial demand:
[Normal Utility Production Baseline] ──► Decreased due to Prolonged Dry Spell & Pipe Leaks │ ▼ (The Status as of May 19, 2026)[30 MLD Deficit] ◄── [Actual Available Volume: Only 90 Million Liters per Day (MLD)]
Engr. Michael Soliva, Officer-in-Charge of BACIWA, categorized the city’s current network state as “very unstable.” The current 30 MLD deficit represents a deep decline from the network’s traditional operational baselines, causing pressure drops that prevent water from naturally reaching high-elevation and coastal zones.
Out of the more than 70,000 active service accounts registered under the BACIWA-PrimeWater network, a significant portion of the population is facing intermittent schedules:
[ BACOLOD CITY SERVICE ACCESSIBILITY ]
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┌───────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────┐
▼ ▼
[ THE UNINTERRUPTED POOL ] [ THE CRITICAL SHORTAGE POOL ]
• **60 to 70 percent** of consumers manage to maintain • **40 percent** (roughly **28,000 accounts**) deal
steady, 24-hour running water. with unpredictable, multi-hour service outages.
• Primarily covers baseline accounts situated closest to • Heavily concentrates across dense coastal barangays
primary treatment reservoirs and pumping stations. along with inland hubs like Villamonte, Estefania, and Taculing.
The issue is amplified by structural breakdowns within the secondary grid. Bulk water delivery arriving from Bacolod Bulk Water Inc. in the north previously cratered down to 11 MLD due to pipeline leakages and localized reservoir structural damage, turning a severe environmental dry spell into a complicated engineering challenge.
To prevent the daily water depletion from triggering a wider public health risk, Mayor Greg Gasataya and the utility’s engineering teams have activated a multi-layered response pipeline:
[ EMERGENCY SHORTAGE MITIGATION ]
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[ THE INFRASTRUCTURE INJECTION ] [ THE PUBLIC HOTLINE & RATIONING ]
• PrimeWater has fully reactivated **four offline deep wells** • City hall launched a dedicated monitoring hotline
to pump critical groundwater back into the drying system. (**0930-047-8289**) for dry-zone tracking.
• Committed to deploying **16 additional static storage tanks** • The Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (DRRMO)
directly inside the hardest-hit barangays like Tangub and Cabug. mobilizes 15 high-capacity trucks for immediate rationing.
Bacolod Representative Alfredo “Albee” Benitez has issued warnings to the utility’s executives, noting that while summer supply dips are recurring administrative hurdles, long-term technical solutions must be accelerated immediately. Moving forward, the city is ordering PrimeWater to optimize generator backup arrays, ensuring that seasonal power alerts hitting the Visayas grid do not simultaneously trigger catastrophic pumping station shutdowns.