WE READ several posts on social media putting the blame of the massive Cebu floods brought about by typhoon Tino early this week on the President and corrupt politicians
The highly partisan vloggers came up with statement saying, “Bongbong Marcos at kurakot na mga politico, tingnan ninyong maigi ang nangyari sa Cebu…”
It is short of saying that the P67 billion worth of anti-flood control projects allocated for Cebu were either not working or that these were not implemented at all.
Let us give them the benefit of doubt that they are correct. But we have our own doubts, as well. That is, even if there were indeed anti-flood control projects in various parts of the province, these were no match to the volume of rain that fell the day before and during the entire night and the day after the typhoon slammed the province and its neighboring places.
Our take on the devastating flood in our home province is that the government may have implemented the wrong projects.
Yes, how can the existing rivers, creeks, and drainage canals accommodate the very large volume of rainwater in the entire province for almost 48 hours non-stop?
We spent almost half of our life in Cebu and our job then necessitated our frequent travels to different municipalities and cities in the entire province including nearby island barangays. Those travels made us familiar with the contours of the towns, as well as the different rivers and creeks.
And when we had our last visit in Cebu some four years back, we noted that the rivers were getting constricted as structures and subdivisions were developed along these bodies of water as near as 30 to 50 meters away.
Clearly, when the rainwater overflowed during the storm days in Cebu where else would it go but to the communities nearby.
That nature’s wrath named Tino did not hold its horses. Cebu’s houses were either blown down or its roofs detached and flown away by the ravaging wind. Vehicles, appliances, and other personal belongings were either submerged or swept away by water current.
The catastrophe in Cebu and other Visayan provinces as well as parts of Mindanao reminds us of a very relevant proposed project that we hope the members of the Davao City Council will reconsider revisiting.
We are referring to a proposal by the late first district councilor Leonardo Avila III to have the city’s major rivers dredged to obviate the possibility of a major flood.
Many of his colleagues then did not hesitate to show their lack of support to the dredging proposal. They harped on the potential huge budgetary requirement if the dredging was to be implemented.
So the Avila proposal did not get the chance to reach even just at the committee level for initial discussion. Eventually, it suffered a natural death which was later followed by the demise of the proponent of the planned measure after suffering from a stroke.
If only to give justice to the proposal and honor to the one who espoused it, we believe that dredging the city’s major rivers is the most appropriate project to prevent massive flooding in the not so distant future.
Yes, by dredging it will increase the river depth thus allowing a much bigger volume of flood water to be accommodated. Thus, the possibility of the fast overflowing of the rivers can be deterred for a longer period. It may even possibly prevent flooding.
Another more applicable project to help prevent massive flooding is by expanding the width of the rivers. But considering that most riverbanks are already included in the titled properties of private individuals or juridical entities, doing such may even be more costly and prone to lawsuits.
Another workable project to prevent floods is to put up large water catchments or dams of sorts. But again, these may also be cumbersome to implement as it will require a large area and right-of-ways to build canals for the excess water to be diverted to the catchment and bringing it back to the river somewhere in the lower grounds.
It is this third project that was planned to be put up somewhere in a village in Sitio Battalion in Buhangin District and was supposed to be funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
Unfortunately, it was not pursued by the city government. No reason was given to the public why.
We can only hope that our councilors will not procrastinate in coming up with a proactive solution to a very possible problem for the city that can happen sooner than the people expect.
