Desalination plant partly opens

Vivant Water, a subsidiary of Vivant Corp., has kicked off the partial operations of the country’s first-ever utility-scale seawater desalination plant in Cordova, Cebu that will help address the growing demand for sustainable sources of drinking water in the region. 

The company announced the completion of the plant’s first skid on Thursday, which signaled the start of providing an initial five million liters of clean and potable water daily to as many as 5,000 households within Metro Cebu. 

“Vivant Water is extremely proud of this accomplishment and we are happy to offer an alternative solution to the water security issue in Cebu province, and ultimately the entire Philippines,”  Vivant Water president Atty. Jess Garcia said. 

Third source of water

“The traditional sources of water in the Philippines are groundwater and surface water, seawater desalination can be the third source of water, and we are proud to be the pioneers,” he added. 

The desalination plant, which can generate 20 million liters a day of potable water in the first phase, can cover the average daily consumption of 20,000 Filipino households.

The plant can be expanded to 50 million liters a day using seawater reverse osmosis technology — a globally utilized technology to remove salt from seawater and produce drinking water.

Before project completion, Vivant Water had already secured a 25-year contract to supply desalinated water to the Metropolitan Cebu Water District.

The project aims to address the gap between water demand and supply while allowing severely extracted groundwater aquifers to replenish naturally.