70% of Metro Manila drains clogged

Congratulations to Sen. Mar Roxas, best wishes to media colleague Korina Sanchez, on their wedding yesterday.

One of the best marriages is said to be Winston Churchill’s. It was a story of loyalty and love. Often, when he gave a speech in parliament, he would not begin until he had received a sign from her. Later in his life, an interviewer asked Churchill what he would want to be if he could live again. With a twinkle in his eye, he replied, “Mrs. Churchill’s next husband.”

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Given today’s geopolitical and climactic settings, the Navy’s job can only get tougher. It needs to defend RP’s territorial waters, fight internal threats of separatism and terrorism, and lead in disaster rescue and relief. Yet all it is getting under the proposed 2010 budget is P10.5 billion — P7 billion for manpower readiness and pay, and P3.6 billion for equipment upkeep and repair.

There is no allocation for capital outlay, like new vessels or buildings. So the Navy is begging Congress for P3.6 billion in supplemental funds. Two-thirds will be for increased fleet patrols, Marine deployments, ammo and rations. The balance is for hardware to improve detection of intruders, rescue missions, and communications. And even that additional budget, legislators know, is lacking.

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It has been established that unusual amount of rainfall and outdated drainage submerged Metro Manila last month. But one more thing needs stressing. Seventy percent of the national capital’s sewers are clogged, the DPWH reports. Floodwaters couldn’t flow out to rivers onto the sea.

Debatable is whether Storm Ondoy’s volume — a month’s rain pouring down in six hours — was induced by nature or by man’s climate change. But the non-upgrading and clogging of sewerage clearly are man-made.

A lot has been said, for instance, about government’s failure to build a Manila Bay spillway for Laguna Lake, as planned way back 1977. Japan-funded studies also show that the metropolis’ three-decade-old sewerage no longer suffices for the doubled population. Engineering works clearly beg implementing. Fund lack is the government’s excuse for inability to start the civil projects. Meanwhile, billions of pesos are allocated yearly for legislative and executive pork barrels.

Unblocking drains and keeping them free thereafter is the fastest flood solution. Yet it’s the hardest for shortsighted citizens and their leaders. Poor street hawkers think it their right to throw plastic wrappers or corncobs into street drains. So do rich homebuilders who mix concrete by the sewer hole. Everyone is at fault. People leave their trash on sidewalks whether or not it’s the garbage man’s pickup day. Road workers dispose of construction debris in manholes.

There’s need for public education in and strict enforcement of solid-waste disposal and anti-littering laws. It’s the Metro Manila Development Authority job to keep the capital tidy, including unclogging drains. But the agency’s heads are as sloppy as the cretins they serve. On their direction, thousands of street sweepers push trash down public drains each day. How can litterbugs teach cleanliness?

Presumably sewers in new urban sprawls north and south of Manila are stopped up as well. That is, if they have drainage at all. Most new cities simply sprouted with no urban planning. It’s like unwanted pregnancies leading to uncaring parenthood. Baguio up in the mountains bunged from Typhoon Pepeng like low Metro Manila under Ondoy. Unabated squatting by both homeless lowlanders and slipshod high-rise builders has ruined the summer capital.

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Reading about coastal degradation in Boracay and Cagayan, a reader reports yet another case while requesting anonymity: “Why are the hills of Noventa in Surigao being flattened, with the red soil trucked to the seaport for shipment to wherever? The once blue Pacific waters have turned orange as far as the eye can see. There are military checkpoints all over, perhaps to protect the nickel mining ravagers.”

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Is it illegal for businessmen to stop selling at a loss? That wasn’t just a snide retort of oil firms to the government’s calamity price freeze. It was a veiled threat. Already, they say, two of the dozen smaller suppliers have cancelled gas imports for next month. Others might follow suit, which would result in fuel shortage.

Of course it’s natural for traders to back off from non-profit. But the problem is no one but the oil firms can say if they’re really losing or just leveraging. Neither the government nor consumers know exactly for how much oil firms buy their stocks and at what markups. Energy Sec. Angelo Reyes has deserted his job of finding out such details. All he does is defend the oil firms’ mega-profits — as gleaned from income tax payments — as the fruits of free market.

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“If you see only the failures of your children, you are a failure as a parent. If you see only the success of your children and gloss over their failures, you are failing as a parent. Praise where your praise is due; correct where correction is called for.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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