The China-backed New Centennial Water Source-Kaliwa Dam Project, which was intended to address Metro Manila’s water problems, remains far from completion, with only 30 percent progress made to date.

In February 2023, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System, or MWSS, reported that the project was at 22 percent completion, indicating that there has been a mere 8 percent advancement in over a year.

“(The project) is actually at about 30 percent completion rate. It’s a design and build, all the equipment is already there, and the clearing is already there. It’s more of really maintaining the progress of the work,” MWSS administrator Leonor C. Cleofas said in a spot interview with reporters on Wednesday. 

Cleofas noted that project contractor China Energy Engineering Corp. has completed about 1.5 kilometers of tunnel, which will be mobilized to connect to the main dam site.

“Of course, we had delays on the Kaliwa Dam because it took us eight years to get the clearances and permits but now progress is being made,” she added.

Despite the challenges, Cleofas remained optimistic that the MWSS and its partners would complete the entire Kaliwa Dam project by 2027, before President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s term ends.

Commissioning, on the other hand, is scheduled to start within the second quarter of 2028.

Kaliwa Dam is a 60-meter-high concrete gravity dam on the Kaliwa River that will have a reservoir surface area of 291 hectares. It will have a maximum gross reservoir volume of 57 million cubic meters and a discharge capacity of 600 million liters a day.

It is a flagship project of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program. Now, the Marcos administration still prioritizes the project under the “Build, Better, More” scheme.

The Kaliwa Dam has been touted as the only viable long-term solution that will provide redundancy to the Angat Dam, currently Metro Manila’s main water source.