Today let us dredge our waterways

 In going to attend a regular Thursday forum of the Kapihan sa Sugbo (KSS), a rather large group of Cebu’s media practitioners, I rode in my rickety 54-year-old Volkswagen Beetle. This 1972 model car has no air-conditioning system but I took it because I was confident in the weather bureau forecast that northeasterly winds would still dominate our city and cool our environment. Indeed, the city was then dry and somehow colder than usual. We had 78 degrees Fahrenheit (or 25 degrees Celsius) and I felt comfortable. Along the way, I played an old Bobby Goldsboro tape on my CKD 500 cassette deck and relished at the marvelous song entitled “Today”.

               Two Cebu City councilors were our guests in that KSS forum. They were Honorable Pastor Alcover Jr. and Honorable Joel Garganera. Both of them shocked us with horrible details on what happened at the Binaliw landfill where many people died in the tragic slide of tons of garbage on January 8, or more than two months ago. They revealed that the facility is a dumpsite and not a landfill and proceeded to explain to us the huge difference between the two. Even in their disappointment that the city leaders are dragging their feet in identifying those responsible for the disaster (and penalizing them for some misfeasance), they spoke about the tragedy with so much care as to avoid any political hue in their discussion. Fiery but true gentlemen!

               In the course of Alcover and Garganera’s elocution, I remembered the first line of Bobby Goldsboro’s “Today” - “Today while the blossoms still cling to the bough." This clause is a poetic metaphor emphasizing the urgent need to cherish and experience moments of joy while they last. The moments of today that we enjoy is the environment that sunny yet somewhat cooler in temperature prevails. The earlier weather reports forecast a fading La Niña and an ensuing neutral weather with a likely surge of El Niño type of condition to last from June till August. That should be a period of roughly five to six months.

               The city leadership of Honorable Mayor Nestor Archival and Honorable Vice Mayor Tomas Osmeña should consider that today is the best time to undertake projects related to environmental concerns more particularly the flooding in the city. I say this because the weather is forecast to be sunny for quite a while. The weather will be ideal for the kind of work needed.

               In the next few months, the city should target dredging the canals and natural waterways. Our riverbeds are heavily silted. I have seen as an example the estero near the Cebu Technological University. It is near the sea line and it is a pity that it could help drain the water in the downtown faster were it not clogged up less than 200 meters from its sea outlet.

               We have lately noticed that even with ordinary rain, waters go over the banks and cause floods. No thanks to our lack of discipline, our esteros are clogged up with garbage. Unfortunately, the higher percentage of such clogging is caused by those who live as informal settlers on the legal easements. Today is the time to relocate them somewhere so that the banks of the city’s waterways can be widened and freed of illegal occupants.

    I like to imagine that the welfare of our city is in the minds of our leaders. This article is just a piece of a reminder that the next few months would be the best time to do our flood-control projects.