With floods stubbornly refusing to recede in several areas, and patchwork flood control structures destroyed by floods, local officials have taken to blaming high tide, soil erosion and extreme rainfall.
To be fair, climate change is unleashing extreme weather disturbances worldwide, so yes, we can blame the weather for our flooding woes. And yes, high tide does aggravate flooding in low-lying areas.
But nature is not entirely to blame. We’re angry and frustrated because we know from the experience of other countries that flood mitigation is possible, with long-term planning, efficient engineering and good governance, and without corruption.
In other countries, public officials see extreme rainfall and heavy flooding as problems that call for durable, efficient solutions ASAP. Effective interventions for rainfall and flood management have been in existence for centuries.
In our country, public officials see extreme rainfall and heavy flooding as problems – but also as opportunities for kickbacks from substandard, patchwork interventions that require regular repair or replacement. As a bonus for politicians, natural calamities also pose opportunities for epal moments, for claiming personal credit for tax-funded ayuda distribution. For every problem, there’s an ayuda.
The government has just announced a nationwide pothole repair. With the newly repaved EDSA Busway disintegrating after just a few days of monsoon rains, I’m not the only one suspecting more kickbacks in this repair program. And I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing more such repairs even of perfectly good pavement as the campaign for 2028 approaches.
Hefty kickbacks and epal opportunities can be irresistible, trumping the need to produce cost-effective, science-based flood control projects that actually do the job, that don’t collapse during high tide or when the ground becomes saturated with rainfall.
Some public officials with a say in flood control may be plain clueless, incompetent idiots. Or perhaps we’re saddled with a combination of both stupidity and venality in our officials.
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Even as the sun finally came out on Friday, several areas particularly in Bulacan and Bataan remained flooded, with residents bracing for more rains this week.
In Hagonoy, Bulacan, and parts of Bataan, which have been placed under a state of calamity, people have developed athlete’s foot from prolonged skin immersion in dirty water.
As doctors and patients have warned, athlete’s foot or alipunga is no laughing matter. Patients complain that the infection is painful and contagious, and like most fungal afflictions, treatment can take weeks. It can also be complicated by continuing skin exposure to contaminated water.
Affected residents, however, have no choice but to wade in the floods, despite the risk of the potentially fatal leptospirosis and worse fungal infections. They have to buy food, drinking water and other household needs. In-person classes and office work can’t be suspended too long; affected residents at some point have to find ways of going to their workplaces and schools.
Those who provide means of transport – through bancas, pedicabs, bamboo rafts and even banana trunks – face the highest risk of infections. But it’s their livelihood, and they regard alipunga as a hazard of the trade.
It’s not the first time though that the affected residents have faced such problems. In previous years, the same afflictions were also reported in many of the same areas.
Why don’t they just relocate? Moving isn’t easy, and it becomes more complicated if the residents own the house.
Also, people still cling to hope that one day, the government can significantly minimize if not completely eliminate the flooding problem. I don’t know if it’s fatalism, or if Pinoy optimism is simply boundless.
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High tide does aggravate flooding, as people in the Malabon-Navotas area will attest. Their flood woes worsened when Imelda Marcos, as human settlements chief during the conjugal dictatorship, decided to turn the natural rainfall catchments in Dagat-Dagatan into a low-cost housing resettlement site, with no provisions for heavy rainfall to be effectively channeled to the sea.
But we’ve been getting high tides for millennia. Since the Spanish period, there have been accounts of flooding in what is now known as Metro Manila and other parts of Luzon. The difference is that today there are engineering interventions to mitigate the deluge.
Storm Ondoy struck way back in 2009. Why wasn’t there an aggressive effort to implement engineering interventions to deal with extreme rainfall and flooding? Since at least 2006, former US vice president Al Gore had already been warning about the “inconvenient truth” of climate change. Scientists had been warning about global warming much earlier.
Since my student days, the Sunken Garden at the University of the Philippines in Diliman often turned into a lake during the typhoon season.
Last week the government announced that 30 sites across Metro Manila, including the UP Sunken Garden as well as portions of Camp Aguinaldo, the Rizal Memorial Stadium and University of Santo Tomas, would be developed into rainwater catchments about 10 meters deep.
What struck me about the announcement was why it took so long for the government to think of that engineering intervention.
The water catchments won’t materialize overnight. As per the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), a detailed engineering plan is needed before funding can be sought for the project under the national budget for 2027.
Such plans don’t come cheap, and they take time to complete. It’s reassuring to be told that a Dutch engineering consultancy, Haskoning, has been tapped for drafting the engineering plan. As I’ve previously written, the Netherlands has a sophisticated nationwide system of water impounding and flood control. But I’m not sure if an engineering plan can be completed within the time frame for the approval of the 2027 budget.
Also, the MMDA said the project would be partly financed by the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which could make it vulnerable to geopolitical tensions.
If not completed on time, that plan, which taxpayers must pay for, could gather dust in some forgotten corner, like the flood control master plan that was completed when Rogelio Singson was public works chief, but which has disappeared.
At least, thanks to the corruption scandal, people now get mad when government officials blame massive flooding on climate change, high tide and soil erosion.
The outrage must be sustained all the way to 2028, when there’s a chance to get rid of all the looters and dimwits in government. Public wrath must not recede, but turn into a tsunami, washing away the trash in government service.