EDITORIAL - Not now, but flood-free future possible

Cebu City is reportedly setting aside some P70 million to dredge and desilt waterways. That seems to be a very big amount to spend on something that will not permanently solve the problem of flooding in the city. All that dredging and desilting will do is make the next flood that comes along a little bit easier on the lives of people.

And while the city embarks on yet another stop gap measure to address the growing problem of flooding, some barangays are now quarreling about how the garbage throwing habits of some are causing the flooding problems of others. It might surprise these barangays to discover that they are quarreling over nothing. Garbage to some extent may exacerbate flooding but it is not the real culprit.

The real culprit is that because of global warming and climate change, it now rains far heavier and far longer than it used to. What it means is that even if we have a pretty good drainage system but that system was built on plans meant to address problems of 20 years ago, it still will not be able to cope with present day water volumes that harder and longer rains will produce.

This does not mean that we throw our hands up in surrender to the rampaging forces of nature over which we have neither dominion nor control. We may not be able to subjugate nature but we certainly can cope. We certainly have the intelligence and the ability to do so. What is clearly lacking is the will to seize the bull by the horns and do something once and for all.

The allocation of P70 million for dredging and desilting is a case in point. Dredging and desilting can never hope to provide lasting solutions to the problem. They can only mitigate it. But if mitigation is the only goal of the city, then it is almost a total waste of funds to do so. What the city should do is spend for a comprehensive and integrated flood control system the likes of which can be seen in some of the world's leading cities.

If the city does not have the kind of money to build such a system, perhaps it can seek the assistance of other countries or foreign cities with which it has these so-called sister-city ties. A case in point is the city of Ormoc. Once ravaged by a devastating flood that killed more than 3,000 people, it became the recipient of a Japanese flood-control project that is the envy of many other cities in the Philippines, including Cebu.

The Japanese flood-control project in Ormoc consists of one huge waterway into which feeds smaller waterways. This huge waterway in turn has huge spillways and gates that close or open to control floods by diverting water one way or another. This system of containing and diverting water has not failed Ormoc ever since and it might do well for Cebu to have a similar system. It may take some time to have it, but if we plan now there might be a flood-free future we can look forward to.