Flooding and fractured governance

The major news this week is the ongoing monsoon, which has caused flooding across much of Luzon. The government again appears helpless, unresponsive and insensitive as heavy rains overwhelm existing flood defenses. PBBM instructs the DPWH to reconnect Central Luzon. Afterward, DPWH Secretary Dizon calls for deeper waterways and large detention basins, warns against theft of pumping station components and typically dismisses engineers for “unsatisfactory performance, lack of urgency and delayed response to calamities.”

Presidential spokesman Claire Castro takes the cake for insensitivity when she questioned why people continued to line up at the flooded NLEX San Simon interchange, even though they already knew flooding was occurring.

Last week, as I drove along NLEX to Pangasinan before the heavy rains began, I noticed that the rice fields on both sides of the expressway from Apalit, Candaba and San Simon to the Lakeshore area in Mexico, Pampanga were already flooded. It was not surprising that more rain expanded the flooding across the whole region.

As the blame game involving past administrations and engineering solutions, such as elevating the NLEX San Simon stretch, persists, we often neglect the fact that we are poor students of history. We have adopted a poorly designed administrative system plagued by fractured governance, which hampers effective disaster response.

The Pampanga River is the second largest river in Luzon and the fifth longest in the Philippines. It flows through at least three provinces: Pampanga, Bulacan and Nueva Ecija. The river carries water from the Sierra Madre and flows westward to Manila Bay.

The Candaba Swamp serves as a critical hydrological buffer within the Pampanga River basin and is one of the most significant wetland ecosystems in Central Luzon. It is part of a wetland system that plays an indispensable role in the region’s natural flood management.

It spans 250 square kilometers and acts as a natural reservoir during heavy rains and seasonal floods. Its hydrology is connected to the broader drainage systems throughout Luzon. Essentially, it serves as a regulatory valve, reducing flood risks in Central Luzon by preventing river channels from overflowing during the rainy season.

Filipinos before the colonial period knew this, and early human settlements were all located in the habitable areas of the river system. This is evident in the towns along the Pampanga River today, such as Masantol, Apalit, Macabebe, Candaba, Guagua, Lubao, Sasmuan, Minalin, Mexico, Calumpit, Paombong, Hagonoy, Pulilan, Plaridel, Angat and Cabiao. The Philippines had a water-based governance system, with rivers and lakes serving as highways for travel and trade.

Spanish and American colonial administrators relocated communities inland and established a land-focused administrative system. Filipino politicians and technocrats continued this pattern, overlooking waterways as they built roads, bridges, highways and settlements across them. We routinely used creeks and rivers as septic tanks for human waste, garbage and industrial effluents. Extensive reclamation projects transformed wetlands into subdivisions, industrial zones and, more recently, airports.

We overlooked an essential fact: water does not recognize political borders, property lines or man-made infrastructure. It moves with gravity through creeks, rivers and wetlands and empties into the sea, regardless of land ownership – be it a millionaire’s estate in a gated community, an informal settlement along an estero, an OFW’s new house in a subdivision, a small farmer’s rice field, a fisherfolk’s home, a local government or a foreign investor.

So when it rains really hard, large areas of Luzon go underwater.

Yes, building more water detention facilities, deepening waterways and dredging will help, but these measures will only shift flooding to other areas.

We must become more attentive students of history and reevaluate our water management strategies, from upstream sources to the ocean. This calls for an integrated approach that involves: 1. Protecting watersheds, reforestation and water impoundment systems for upstream and watershed areas; 2. Using river and flood control measures such as small reservoirs, dikes, riverbank reinforcement, dredging, bypass channels and pumping facilities and 3. Improving community disaster preparedness with river monitoring, early warning systems, drainage clearing and flood-resistant housing.

The proposal to develop additional flood-retention areas by restoring swamps such as those in Candaba and Hagonoy is sound, but it will be stymied by opposition from local politicians. Remember the near shouting match between PBBM and a Pampanga politician in 2023?

We also need to implement comprehensive land use planning by halting construction of human settlements and government facilities in low-lying areas and by imposing strict building requirements near waterways.

We should implement projects using an integrated watershed management approach rather than dividing them by local government political boundaries.

A good first step would be to halt these graft-filled flood control projects and redirect the money to projects that manage the flow of water from upstream regions to the sea.

Why is this not being discussed during the ongoing budget hearings? Your guess is as good as mine.

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PBBM just signed RA 12325, expanding the UAQTE law to improve access to disadvantaged sectors and establishing a private education assistance program for students enrolled in priority programs.

Thank you, PBBM, for your continued support in expanding access to and equity in free, quality higher education.

While some of these amendments can be implemented through UNIFAST Board policies, the new law can hopefully mobilize the critical funding needed for Free Higher Education. There might be more TES and TDP grantees, but the P20,000 and P27,000 per year subsidies are woefully inadequate.