Communities United Through Water

ASDSW's is a non-profit organization building the capacity of self-reliant partnerships to plan, implement, and manage community-driven clean water and sanitation solutions through sustainable organizational strategies, WASH Education, and appropriate technologies.

Philippines Water Issues

Currently 12 million Filipinos have limited or no access to safe water. This is not due to lack of water - the Philippines has an average rainfall of 4000-5000mm (100-200") per year! The problems are due to a lack of operating infrastructure to distribute and treat water. Only 46.1% of the population has access to level II (communal faucets) and level III (household connection) through Water Supply Providers, Local Government Units (LGUs) and other small water provider systems.

Over 25 million Filipinos do not have access to basic sanitation. Natural disasters such as typhoons, monsoons, landslides, and volcanoes, as well as governance problems such as watershed mismanagement, create a breeding ground for water related diseases, such as cholera, hepatitis A and typhoid fever. Up to 58% of Philippine groundwater is contaminated with coli form and needs treatment. The rest is surface water, which is easily contaminated by lack of sanitation and exposure to the elements.

Over 30% of illnesses from a five-year period were from water-related diseases. Diarrhea caused mainly by waterborne pathogens is the highest cause of morbidity (illness) and the third-highest cause of mortality (death) of children under five. The annual economic losses caused by water pollution are estimated at US$1.3 billion. These include US$500 million for health.

Prohibitive costs of conventional water technologies are a major deterrent in supplying clean water to the people. It would require US$5 billion a year for the next ten years to enact the Clean Water Act. Infrastructure development projects in the Philippines have failed in significant numbers due to minimal advocacy to the general public of the importance of safe water for health and poverty reduction resulting in lack of community ownership and no political will; organizational and management issues resulting in operating associations failing; minimal technical capacity of designers and those that are maintaining and operating the systems.

The challenges of supplying clean water to every Filipino are further limited by

• community water systems in disrepair,

• local corruption in government,

• substandard water resource infrastructure and 

• lack of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) education.