Bencyrus Ellorin
I HAD doubts about claims that the Jan. 16 and the Jan. 28, 2017 floods were exclusively urban floodings.
After the floods, City Hall critics were quick to jump on the gun claiming inefficiency, failure in urban planning, so on and so forth. Why not? But methinks, we need to understand better the problem before yakking. In my previous columns I had tried to explain that flooding is natural in Cagayan de Oro because of its topography.
I may add now that the grand architect of the Cagayan de Oro up there so designed the city to have enough natural flood mitigation measures--called swamplands. I have seen an old topographic map of the city where the areas in the Limketkai Center up to the peripheries of Cogon market and Nazareth, the present University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines (USTSP), down to Agora, Gaabucayan and Tabaco, Puntod areas are classified as swamplands. These are areas traversed by the Bitan-ag Creek.
These areas now are one of the heaviest built-up zones in the city. The Jan. 16 and Jan. 28 floods were not the first. Every time heavy rains fall on Libona in Bukidnon, Bitan-ag Creek swells. I remember in February 1998, Bitan-ag Creek swelled, resulting in flood in Camaman-an when the rains there was light. That flood resulted in the death of a child who fell in a waterway. He was found downstream in the Lapasan area.
The flooding of the Limketkai, USTSP, Agora, Cogon areas is natural as water seeks its natural path. Drainage clogs are aggravating. Engineers of Limketkai and the USTSP should have integrated these natural hazards in their immediate environment and made engineering designs that are adaptive to floods, especially in a climate-changing world where extreme weather events become more frequent and more intense. The same with engineers of the Department of Public Works and Highways. The current local government can only do so much to mitigate impacts.
Urban flooding and flooding in urban areas are two different things. Flooding in urban areas can be caused by flashfloods or coastal floods or river floods. Urban flooding on the other hand “is specific in the fact that the cause is a lack of drainage in an urban area. As there is little open soil that can be used for water storage nearly all the precipitation needs to be transport to surface water or the sewage system.” (www.floodsite.net)
There is no denial that the city’s drainage system is inadequate, and is not able to cope with rapid urbanization. Add to that the fact that natural drainage systems, the swamplands, have been altered. This exponentially increases the flood risks. That is why, a few minutes of exposure to heavy rains in the coastal area or in the watershed up in Libona, Bukidnon, results in serious inundation.
Too bad for Cagayan de Oro, the mix of natural and man-made hazards makes the city look bad as it strikes the heart of the city’s boom town. It is like one building a very nice house, only that the living room is flooded every time three horses urinate.
The explanation of City Engineer Ronald Pacuribut about the source of floodwaters is enlightening. It underscores the natural causes of the floods: heavy rains in Libona, Bukidnon and the fact that unsustainable agriculture practices in plantations and lack of forest cover in the slopes above Camaman-an, Indahag, Kinawe, in goldich Gango seriously diminished the capability of the soil up there to absorb and hold water. His explanation points to river flooding, as distinguished from urban flooding, as one of the major causes of the recent inundations.
Downstream, it would not be tenable to tear down the highise buildings, but exact and holistic engineering solutions should be done in no time. Haphazard, piecemeal solutions like the elevation of that segment of the national highway on CM Recto Ave., proudly claimed by one politician to be his project last election, run smack into our faces.
As we endure the new normal, we have to live with the floods like other metropolitan areas. We need not be too harsh on our city, we do not have exclusivity to the flooding problem. Metro Cebu and Metro Manila, and even smaller urban cities like Butuan have far more serious flooding problems.
As it is, while bayanihan is not applicable to concrete, highise buildings, Cagayanons can do bayanihan by joining hands cleaning esteros. The newly formed Task Force on Solid Waste has started the ball rolling. Together, we can clean up our mess while long-term big ticket flood control infrastructure projects are in the works.
E-mail: bency.ellorin@gmail.com
