News

Prime Infra-led WawaJVCo is committed to ensuring the readiness of the Upper Wawa Dam ahead of its scheduled commercial operations this December, following the project’s completion seven months ahead of plan.

A handover ceremony from the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contractor to WawaJVCo was recently held marking the successful completion of the dam’s construction works.

“The completion of the Upper Wawa Dam reflects Prime Infra and WawaJVCo’s ability to deliver large-scale infrastructure projects on time. This marks the beginning for one of our most critical water projects,” said Melvin John Tan, Prime Infra’s Market Sector Lead for Water and WawaJVCo President.

WawaJVCo has conducted a series of tests to evaluate the dam’s performance. This includes testing the Upper Wawa Dam’s gates, the functionality of the environmental flow turbine, and other sensors and instruments in the dam.  

The Upper Wawa Dam is the largest water supply dam to be built in the Philippines in over 50 years. The dam is the second phase of the Wawa Bulk Water Supply Project and will provide a yearlong water supply of up to 710 million liters per day.

The construction of the dam started in 2021 and was completed in record time taking into consideration its complexity, scale and magnitude. It features a 450-hectare reservoir which is about twice the size of Bonifacio Global City, and can store up to 120 million cubic meters of water.

Once commercially operating, the Upper Wawa Dam is expected to benefit over 700,000 households or 3.5 million Filipinos within the service area of the Metropolitan Waterworks & Sewerage System (MWSS).

MWSS Administrator and Vice Chairperson Leonor Cleofas has previously cited the Upper Wawa Dam as integral in the agency’s implementation of its water security roadmap, specifically in terms of ensuring a stable water supply.

Aside from securing water availability, the dam is designed with an ungated stepped spillway which helps regulate the release of water flow from the dam into the river, and an environmental flow turbine which supplies continuous water to the downstream and also generates renewable power supply for consumption of the dam, lessening it’s dependency to source power from the grid.