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La Mesa Dam is a 700-hectare water reservoir built in 1929 and raisedin 1959. It is part o a 2,700 hectare watershed in Fairview, Quezon City withan elevation o 100 meters above sea level and a spilling level o 80.15 meters.Te water coming rom the reservoir goes to the Balara reatment Plant

urther south by the Manila Water, the West Area concessionaire o MWSS.

MWSS’ Ipo Dam  is a single purpose water supply dam located at theconfluence o Angat River and Ipo River approximately 9 Km rom the An-gat Dam . It serves as the main impoundment o water released rom AngatDam beore it enters Metro Manila through tunnels and aqueducts.

La Mesa And Ipo Dams

tunnels between Ipo and Bicti. Teproject is in the bidding stage as eval-uation o the pre-qualification doc-uments o the submitting bidders isstill on-going.

Barring any unoreseen inhib-iting events, the three projects are

envisioned to be completed between2018 to 2021.

For the first time in the historyo the concession era with the con-cessionaires, the MWSS called or adownward movement o the tariff charged by the concessionaires to ourcustomers during the rate rebasingexercise by MWSS in 2013. Tis didnot sit well with the concessionairesresulting in their filing o an arbi-tration case with the internationalarbitration body with the main issue

revolving around the inclusion ornon-inclusion o the concessionaires’income tax as recoverable expense.Although a decision was alreadymade avouring Maynilad Water Ser-

 vices, Inc. (MWSI), it was a still a vic-tory o sorts as the approved rate wasstill below the original rate positionposed by MWSI in the 2013 rate re-basing exercise.

Meanwhile, the decision onthe Manila Water Company, Inc.

(MWCI) arbitration case took a pos-itive direction as the Appeals Panelrendered its Final Award confirmingthe determination o the MWSS Reg-ulatory Office (RO) that CorporateIncome ax (CI) is not recoverablebecause the concessionaire is a pub-lic utility and that CI is not one othe expenditures that the ConcessionAgreement allows to be recovered.

Rates Rebasing

Te AWIP, meanwhile, will im-prove the efficiency o water beingconveyed to the treatment plants in LaMesa and Balara by the constructiono an additional tunnel connecting the

Ipo Dam to the Bicti catch basin and re-habilitation works to the current three

AWTIPTe bidding process or theproject has been completed withthe issuance o the Notice o Awardto the winning bidder San MiguelHoldings-KWater consortium onDecember 7, 2015. Contract signingwas done in January 2016. Construc-

tion is targeted to start on September2016.

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Te MWSS has undergone sev-eral transormations since its incep-tion in February 18, 1878. In thatyear, Manila, like the rest o “Las

Islas Pilipinas”, was still governedby Spain. Tis was also the year theManila Water Supply System wasconstructed rom unds donatedby Spanish philanthropist Fran-cisco Carriedo y Peredo. Tus wasborn the oldest water system in Asiawhich, interestingly enough alsobears its present acronym o MWSS,albeit or a different name (now orMetropolitan Waterworks & Sewer-age System). MWSS began its tasko providing tap water to what isnow Metropolitan Manila by deliv-ering 16 million liters o water dailyto some 300,000 people.

Te water supply came rom theMarikina River, and between 1908and 1924, MWSS increased the sup-

History and Reorganization

ply by installing additional pump-ing capacity at Santolan in what isnow Quezon City, in the processbuilding a masonry dam at Wawa,

Montalban and a 42-inch gravityline to the then San Juan town thatfilled a 224-million liter reservoir.otal water supply capacity wasupped to 92 million liters a day.

In 1919, the Metropolitan Wa-ter District (MWD) was createdthrough Act No. 2832, expandingits service area to cover the capital’s14 adjoining cities and municipal-ities.

Between 1924 and 1944, theMWSS built the Angat-Novalichessystem tapping the Angat River inBulacan as water source that be-came, up to now, the centrepieceo Metro Manila’s water system.Te major components o Manila’swater system now include the Ipo

Dam at theconfluence othe Ipo andAngat Rivers,a 6.4 kilometertunnel rom

Ipo to Bicti, a36 billion literimpoundingacility inNovaliches, a7.5 km. rawwater aque-duct romNovalichesto Balara, theBalara Fil-tration Plantand a covered

reservoir inSan Juan thatis capable oholding 40million literso water.

Even theravages oWorld War II,

where the Philippines was orciblyplaced under Japanese occupationor our years did not deter theMWD to continue to deliver water

to its service areas it could reach.Te post-war years rom 1945

to 1964 saw the improvement o theAngat-Novaliches system as moreaqueducts were built, the BalaraPlant’s capacity increased, addition-al storage reservoirs were construct-ed in San Juan and additional waterdistribution mains were put to use.

In 1955, a major overhaul wasmade as the National Waterworksand Sewerage System or the NAWA-SA took over the unctions o theMWD increasing the service cover-age to include the other water sys-tems nationwide. From then on, tapwater was called “Nawasa juice”, anick name that stuck until the early1900s. In act, even up to the presenttime, MWSS is ofen inadvertentlycalled NAWASA by some people.

During the post war years, thepopulation in what is now metro-politan manila steadily grew rom913,000 in 1939 to 1.6 million peo-

ple in 1948 to about 2.5 million in1960 – more than double the pop-ulation it covered beore the warbroke out. Because o the increaseddemand, the Alat river and a smalldiversion dam was built there to de-liver water to the Novaliches reser-

 voir.In 1962, NWSA signed an

agreement with the National PowerCorporation (NPC) to include a wa-ter-supply component in the con-struction o the Angat Multi-pur-

pose Dam which was completed in1968. Te NWSA’s financial con-tribution ensured water rights to aregulated discharge o 2,000 millionliters a day rom the new dam.

In 1964, the then InternationalBank or Reconstruction and De-

 velopment (IBRD) now known asthe World Bank provided unding

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