Photo of an Artesian Well in Bauan [January 1914, BPW Quarterly Bulletin]

This photograph is part of a series showing construction projects undertaken by the Bureau of Public Works during the American colonial era. All photographs have been digitally extracted from the Quarterly Bulletins of the bureau and processed using graphics editing software to improve quality. It goes without saying that the eventual output of each extract was always going to be dependent on the quality of the original scan.

According to the Bureau of Public Works report, among the most difficult problems that the American colonial government encountered upon its takeover of the Philippines from the Spaniards was the provision of “pure drinking water for the numerous, thickly-populated small towns and their outlying barrios.”

Hence, the Bureau of Public Works was given the task of constructing “an adequate number of municipal water supply systems, utilizing gravity line or pumping plant methods” to provide potable water to the masses. It was finally decided in 1904 that at least one artesian well in each of the more important towns would be drilled.

Among the towns that benefited from this decision was the Batangs town of Bauan, as shown in the photograph below. In the quarterly report, the photograph was captioned: “Artesian well in the town of Bauan, Batangas.”

¹ “Bureau of Public Works Quarterly Bulletin, Volume 2 No. 4,” compiiled by C.A. Tansill, published January 1914 in Manila by the Bureau of Public Works.