SCHOOL OF CIVIL, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND GEOLOGICAL ENGINEERING

REFLECTION PAPER 2
(Water Crisis)

ESE143-2 / E01

(Water Supply Planning and Development)

2nd Quarter-School Year 2020-2021

Submitted by:
Regencia, Irish Mae M.

Submitted to:

ENGR. ALICIA SAN DIEGO

Professor
Growing up with my family, you’ll learn and practice how to be economical in all areas. And
because of it, I learned how to value things that really matter at a young age. So it frustrates me
because I can’t do much yet and on how people don’t realize how important water is and since
they already receive clean water in their faucets at home anytime and anywhere they want,
they already think that our water is good and unlimited. But who wouldn’t? Our water is
underpriced like we have unlimited water. Yes, 71 percent of earth is water but we only have
1% of usable water to survive. I know that we have to save but I never knew that scarcity of
water in other countries is severe to the point that they are already counting until their day
zero. Good thing, our country is rich with water so we don’t experience water stress yet, and
we don’t rely that much to ground water. But I hope Filipinos will realize it now, how important
water is before it’s too late before we experience what Mexico is facing. And kahit may
problema sa tubig ang mexico, pinayagan parin ng government nila na ipatayo yung brewery
which is unfair and shows capitalism. Kasi mas inisip nila yung impact nito sa economy nila pero
di nila inisip yung impact neto sa tubig nila at mas kailangan nila na mag tipid sa paggamit ng
tubig. Possible na umabot na talaga sila sa day zero kung tinuloy yon. So nilaban ng mga tao
yung right nila to access water. narealize ko din don na ang kawalan ng tubig ay pwedeng
magtungo sa matinding gulo kasi nag aagawan na sa tubig. I watched a film before entitled
“soylent green”. In the movie, for new York city only, it has a population of 40,000,000 for the
year 2022. That’s a lot for a city that is not big enough for that amount of population. And
because there’s overpopulation and due to irresponsibility of people, there’s a lot of garbage
that can be seen everywhere. Then the time comes, when everything is too much,
overpopulations, no access of food from natural resources because it can’t live or grow due to
the pollution and greenhouse effect, water is too polluted so water species can’t live and
multiply, people sleep in streets and in stairs, or lives in a car and air became foggy so all people
would wear mask all the time, there’s heat wave, beef and vegetables are very rare and I think
only rich people have access to it and not everyone have access to water. Everything is hard to
get and everything is mostly gone and because of the Heat wave all year long, greenhouse
effect. Everything is burning up. I felt sad watching this movie because since that time came up,
they were eating a cube shaped food called soylent green which was a miracle food of high
energy plankton and even that they were running out of supply and it would result to chaos
kasi nagwawala mga tao, and nagpapaunahan na makakuha nung last supply and other people
would rather die just to relieve the pain. It’s sad to think that soon if we continued life before
the pandemic, we are not too far in this kind of situation. But here’s the twist of the movie,
since overpopulation problem ripples most of the problem, like pollution and no food from
natural resources, the people did not know that there newest soylent green was made out of
people that died.

I also learned here that a water scarcity can be intensified by storms because the water cycle
changes due to climate change because warmer temperatures can increase the rate of
evaporation of water into the atmosphere, in effect increasing the atmosphere's capacity to
"hold" water so the excess precipitations may fall on other areas or it is distributed unevenly.
So kapag sa lugar niyo bumagsak yung ulan, too much water will arrive all at once, much of the
rain water will just simply run off the than replenishing aquifers. Also, the scarcity of water can
be further worsen by big hurricanes because it can result to extensive damage to different
infrastructure and can contaminate the water.

One of the solutions said in the video was to raise the price of water for us to invest to better
sewer systems and treatment facilities and people will conserve in using water. However, this
will have a great impact to our economy since everything that is produced for us to survive uses
water so all of that will have inflation.

The videos sadden me and it actually made me not regret taking up Environmental and Sanitary
Engineering. In fact, this can be used as a motivation to be great and be an innovative engineer
maybe I could find better solutions like a conventional desalinating of salt water that is cost
effective to provide water for the future and etc. Di kasi narerealize ng mga tao na mas
kailangan natin ng tubig compare sa mga ibang bagay. Di nila naisip na kung wala yung tubig
pwede ding mawala na tayo compared sa mga technology, mamahaling damit, kuryente, we
could always live without those things pero we could not live without water, we could live for
atleast 2 weeks by just drinking water. it saddens me because kahit na ipaalam natin to sa mga
tao, kahit na ipaintindi natin sa kanila how badly we now need to conserve water, marerealize
nila yun pero saglit lang tas balik na ulit sa dating gawi and it is sad na marerealize lang nila
yung value ng tubig kapag malapit na natin maexperience yung naeexperience ng Mexico. Kaya
naman po talaga eh, sa mexico sa saved or lessen their consume of water by 50%. Pero, I think
it’s better na matuto tayong maging matipid lagi sa lahat ng bagay,hindi yung pagmawawala na
tsaka lang papahalagahan, kasi ganun lagi tayong nagtitipid, magiging mayaman tayo sa lahat
ng bagay soon. i know ang dami ko po sinabi na “sad” pero kasi po sad talaga how little the
number of people that actually care about this kind of matter. But I’m happy because I have the
opportunity to study this and it made me learn, understand and appreciate the value water and
realize how lucky we are that we live in this century.