The flood control scandal has become the hottest topic today in the country because it has affected a lot of Filipinos regardless of social status.
Whether it’s real, imagined, real, incomplete or ghost projects, the flood control projects have become familiar to a lot of Filipinos, according to Guillermo Luz, chairperson of Liveable Cities Philippines and chief resilience officer of the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation.
He adds it’s exhausting the people’s patience. ‘And what is most alarming is that many of the hardest hit structures were in areas supposedly protected by flood control projects themselves,’ says Luz during the recent Liveable Cities Lab on Rethinking Flood Resilience through Sustainable Urban Planning forum.
A smorgasbord plan
In his talk organized by the Liveable Cities Lab on Rethinking Flood Resilience through Sustainable Urban Planning, prominent urban planner Dr. Nathaniel von Einsiedel, the principal planner of CONCEP Inc. laments that the country is adopting an agglomerate approach in the flood management plan. ‘We don’t have a National Integrated Flood Management policy master plan. What we have is a hodgepodge of water-related policies and plants and offices, says Einsiedel, who also served as the first Commissioner for Planning of the Metro Manila Commission.
‘And what is interesting, and this is something that’s at the bottom of the list is the river basin control office under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. There are 18 River Basin Development Councils in the Philippines, but for some reason, they never convene,’ adds Einsiedel.
Einsiedel describes the current scenario as very fragmented, inadequate and lacking in interjurisdictional collaboration. Right now, the government’s approach is to build gray infrastructure such as the reservoir levees, flood walls, flood gates, sea walls, etc. Nevertheless, these infrastructure are very expensive, but as we all have been a source of illegal wealth for some people.
Besides, these major infrastructure projects disturb the land and disrupt the natural flow of water. ‘When you change the route of a river, you hasten the flow, and once the speed of water accelerates, it erodes the sides of it,’ he points out.
Moreover, Einsiedel says infrastructure requires regular maintenance, and the Philippine government is not very well known for effective maintenance. He also warns that it creates a false sense of security among the people. ‘We need to rethink the existing approach to flood management and to shift from the traditional two things that are at the forefront of mitigating flood hazards-floodplains and stormwater management.
He adds that the people also need to understand that flooding is a natural curse. Flood damage occurs only when human beings interfere with the natural flooding process by one altering the water course, for example, developing areas in the upstream of the watershed, and cutting down forests in the mountains.
As far as subdivisions are concerned, the problem is that the drainage plants of subdivisions are limited only to the boundary of their subdivision. ‘They don’t bother to collect where the outfalls are, which is a local government unit (LGU) responsibility. Now another problem is the alteration of the water course, because this should not be allowed,’ says Einsiedel.
In fact, when property owners buy a lot and it’s supposed to be depressed,, the traditional approach is the tambak method. It’s just actually just transferring the flood water to the area outside the property.
If there’s an existing flood management policy, that practice should not be allowed. In case it can be allowed, the developers have to get the permit. They also have to show that it will not alter the natural flow of water.
Stormwater management
Unlike rural areas that have a lot of previous open space that can absorb rainwater, urban areas have a lot of roads which cannot absorb rainwater. The rainwater is conducted through culverts, and they’re conducted to the lowest areas, and they cause flash floods.
‘Most of our towns and cities have conventional drainage systems that are limited mainly to the population areas, and many of them, or most of them, actually have not considered the additional volume of water caused by climate change,’ says Einsiedel.
Although there is a template that they follow based on the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development guidelines, Einsiedel says they don’t really translate this into storm water management systems, and mostly they rely on the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to do the flood control plans for the jurisdictions.
‘If we are to solve the problem of flooding, we need to understand that this is a natural occurrence, and that we need to study the location, the specific conditions of the place where we need to come up with the floodplain management system and the stormwater management system,’ Einsiedel points out.