Palau Reservoir Transparency

Palau does have surface water infrastructure: Babeldaob, the main island, hosts the Ngerimel Reservoir (approx. 15 million gallons / 57,000 m³) and the Ngerikiil watershed, which supply the Ngeruobel Water Treatment Plant serving Koror. The Palau Public Utilities Corporation (PPUC) monitors reservoir levels operationally — documented readings such as 13.66 feet at 93% capacity have been cited in public drought advisories issued by the National Emergency Committee (NEC). However, PPUC does not publish reservoir levels on a public data portal or website; disclosure occurs only during drought emergencies through NEC press releases and newspaper reporting in the Island Times.

Data accessibility is limited to narrative press releases and news articles. No structured format (CSV, JSON, XML) or API is available. A 2020 US Department of Interior assessment of Palau's water treatment plants is available as a PDF, providing infrastructure detail, but this is a one-time audit document rather than an ongoing data stream. PPUC's corporate website does not host any operational datasets.

Methodology v1.3.0 (capacity-weighted), conservative. Palau's identified reservoir storage is dominated by Ngerimel (~0.057 hm³ / 15 Mgal on Babeldaob) plus the Ngerikiil watershed system supplying the Ngeruobel WTP; together with the Metemellasch dam serving northern states, total national reservoir capacity is below 0.1 hm³ and well below the 10 hm³ analytical threshold. PPUC discloses reservoir levels only reactively during NEC drought activations (e.g. Ngerimel at 13.66 ft / 93% capacity in 2016) — crisis-only, no structured feed. Conservatively, effective covered capacity (qualitative crisis-only reporting on Ngerimel) is approximately 15% of identified storage. Coverage = round(100 × 0.009 / 0.06) ≈ 15.

Drought reports (e.g., the June 2016 Drought Report published by the Palau government) contain historical rainfall and reservoir level snapshots, providing limited retrospective data. The US DOI 2020 Preliminary Assessment includes infrastructure condition assessments. However, no continuous time-series dataset is publicly accessible. Historical depth is limited to discrete event-driven snapshots.

Updates are event-driven, not scheduled. PPUC reports reservoir levels to the NEC during drought conditions, and the NEC issues public advisories. Outside drought periods, no public water level updates are issued. The Island Times newspaper serves as an ad hoc disclosure channel. There is no weekly, monthly, or seasonal publication routine.

The 2020 US DOI Water Treatment Plants Preliminary Assessment documents the physical infrastructure, treatment capacity, and condition of PPUC's water assets, providing methodological context. The 2016 Drought Report documents PPUC's monitoring process during emergency conditions. However, no publicly accessible protocol document defines measurement methods, calibration standards, or data quality procedures for routine reservoir monitoring.

English is the co-official language of Palau (alongside Palauan) and is the language of all PPUC, NEC, and government documentation. The Island Times is published in English. All technical reports and drought advisories are accessible to international researchers without translation. Score is partial because data availability is sparse regardless of language.