ILIGAN City ― “Lonely rivers flow, to the sea, to the sea, to the open arms of the sea…”

These are some of the lyrics of the song “Unchained Melody.”

Rivers here mean water. And water, they say, is life.

But the waters here in this city, as in many places in this country are furious. So they’re not lonely. Furious to the point that they are bursting out of the pipes so they can’t anymore pursue their destinations which are the open arms of the homes of the dwellers.

“Lonely rivers sigh, wait for me, wait for me…I'll be coming home wait for me.”

Still, that’s a continuation of some of the lyrics of the song, “City of waterfalls,” this place is called, but the water here to the homes is “true or false.”

According to some unwatered homes here. Why?

Here’s my one peso worth of thought.

To note, the previous administration of then-mayor Lawrence Ll. Cruz had a P495 million ambitious water expansion project. For every home in the 44 barangays. But not all of the 44 barangays could have water in their homes.

Even if the waiting in the homes is with open arms, and maybe with parts other than their arms!

For said project could not be finished during Cruz’s term. It had to go beyond…

Yet what did the administration following Cruz say? “The project is a failure!”

Even if they had been there for three terms, nine years more or less, this administration under mayor Celso G. Regencia.

We go now to the making of a huge global project called “Panama Canal.” This canal to note now connects the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. How? It seemed impossible then. As there was no water, with the terrain very forbidding? The French made much digging. And more digging, To no avail. The workers got sick with malaria and yellow fever and other diseases in the area. Thus the French stopped a seemingly futile undertaking. A colossal “failure” so to speak.

The Americans didn’t think so. They would build on that darn failure.

Analysis after analysis brought them to the conclusion that the waters to be passed on that unwatered portion so that there would be some shortcut to reach another ocean would be to raise the waters through it. Above the water level.

So, there wasn’t much digging this time around.

And years later, the Panama Canal was built. It was an engineering wonder.

Through some sort of “locks”, the waters that they have taken from one body of water were raised above its level. Along with it the vessels passing through this artificial body of water now called the Panama Canal, Wow.

Oh, never mind the details of this wonderful human idea brought to fruition.

One can always make his own exhaustive research on this.

Here in our city, there’s water already running inside the pipes laid with the intended purpose of having the waters reach each home here.

But “failure of the past administration” is still mostly on the mind of this CGR administration.

Instead of building on what has been begun. So the lesson of the canal is obvious, don’t you think so?

(Email: norasorino2@gmail.com)