Government study foresaw flood–Palafox

In http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/home/top-news/16610-government-study-foresaw-floodpalafox.html


Government study foresaw flood–Palafox
Written by Dennis D. Estopace / Reporter
Monday, 28 September 2009 21:39

THE government was warned 32 years ago that ceding control of urban development may have adverse consequences, such as the devastation experienced by the metropolis on Saturday.

“Some are saying it’s [the flooding of key Metropolitan Manila areas] an act of God. It’s not. It’s neglect on the part of the government,” architect Felino Palafox Jr. told the BusinessMirror on Monday as casualties of Typhoon Ondoy grew to more than a hundred dead and thousands of people displaced.

In the document sent by Palafox, the Metro Manila Transport, Land Use and Development Planning Project (Mmetroplan) already cited the Marikina Valley as among the areas deemed “unsuitable for development.”

The area that includes the city of Marikina were among those that sustained the most damage, according to news reports. In one hard-hit site alone, Provident Village, TV reports said 58 bodies had already been recovered, presumably people who never had time to leave their homes as floodwaters rose too quickly.

“Development should be restricted by the application of controls in three major areas—in the Marikina Valley, the western shores of Laguna de Bay, and the Manila Bay coastal area to the north of Manila,” said the report submitted in July 1977 to then-Public Works and Highways chief Alfredo Juinio.

“We’ve told government all along [that] this would happen because of the flooding [in] the same month in 1970,” Palafox said.

He said he was working for the government then when he and a group of researchers undertook this World Bank-funded study on a land-use plan that was finalized by Hong Kong-based consulting firm Freeman Fox and Associates.

Palafox cited a recommendation from the study that the government should monitor the Marikina Riverbank so that the water would not reach 90 meters. Likewise, no structure should have been allowed within nine meters from the riverbank, he added.

“Dahil hindi sinunod ’yun, parang massacre ang nangyari [Because the recommendation was not heeded, what occurred was virtually a massacre],” he said.

The three-volume report also noted that “urban development is spreading into [these] areas which are, in their present state, unsuitable for development—either because they are low-lying and liable to flooding, or because development is without adequate facilities for the treatment and disposal of sewage [the norm in Manila] and so will continue to contribute to the severe pollution of areas, such as Laguna de Bay.”

The study added: “The unsuitable areas for development, where pressures are nevertheless considerable, are primarily the flat coastal areas to the north where extensive areas are liable to flooding and where increased pressures for reclamation are likely to further exacerbate this problem.”

Another is “the Marikina Valley, to the east, where the land is liable to flooding and where development with inadequate provision for the treatment and disposal of sewage is contributing to the severe pollution of Laguna de Bay and where flooding is a problem in the adjacent areas.”

Finally, the study said the pressure for development, but requiring control, includes “the western shores of Laguna de Bay where development without adequate facilities for the treatment and disposal of sewage is contributing to the severe pollution of Laguna de Bay and where flooding is a problem in the adjacent areas.”

“In order to avoid development contributing to longer-term flooding and water pollution, it is necessary that the short-term development is restricted in these areas. Only when remedial measures to deal with the problems have been implemented, should the development of these areas proceed on a significant scale,” the study said.

“Lessons are to be learned, for sure, but these have been taught three decades ago,” Palafox said.

MMetroPlan

These are pages from the Metro Manila Transport, Land Use and Development Planning Project (MMetroplan) that architect Jun Palafox sent to journalists to point out government culpability in the flooding after typhoon Ondoy hit the metropolis.

The MMetroplan is a 1977 World Bank-funded study for the Department of Public Works, Transportation and Communications. It recommended that since Marikina Valley is prone to flooding, development there should have been strictly regulated.

Stepping back

QUEZON CITY-I stepped back to escape the wind-shoved rain on the balcony at the third floor of Bangko Mabuhay rural bank headquarters in Tanza, Cavite.

Messages of typhoon Ondoy's devastation flooded my mobile phone inbox Saturday. It was only three o'clock in the afternoon but sun rays stayed blocked by a curtain of rain.

The skies poured water equivalent to a month's rainfall. My wife Patricia's message said Manila's main thoroughfare, 33 kilometers east, has morphed into a river.

My two friends agreed there's no way the Nissan Patrol we rode on can beat the torrent of water gushing forth to reach the lowest level it seeks.

Drowned in whiskey and worries over my family and friends, I slept in the clothes I wore.

It was only nine o'clock but the weight of the day's events pushed me over to REM and the ocean of alpha waves. The singing of guests three doors from our room was also drowned out by the rain that slashed the glass window at the second floor of a second-class motel we checked into for the night.

The trip back to Manila via Binakayan, Bacoor, coastal road, and EDSA bared Onyok's strength. Piles of trash thrown into the water were pushed ashore. Borders that separated houses and rivers and creeks were erased. People waded in ankle-deep brackish water over side streets.

The sky was blue and the sight was clear as gigantic tarpaulin ads lay crumpled like wet tissue on the base of steel structures. The air that swept inside the SUV was refreshing -crisp like newly-ironed cloth, pure like a baby's breath, and soft like freshly-washed cotton linen.

Futher east of Manila, however, the air reeked of death, despair, and devastation.

Maybe that's why we were able to tolerate the loss of power in our house for 24 hours. Each member of the family in UP Diliman were accounted for and, except for my uncle, were spared the torment that fellow Filipinos suffered.

The irritation over cut power supply was only because we failed to turn on the television and share the grief, though marginal, clutching hundreds of families -father, mother, son, daughter- since Saturday.

At least, I thought, my two daughters were spared from the disturbing images of children pinning their hopes on a clump of garbage to survive. They didn't.

At least, I thought, the black out steeled me from what those images could have done to my psyche had I've seen them upon arriving from Tanza, Cavite.

It's been three days now, but the images of fellow human beings who have lost their lives and are at a loss over their lives remained haunting.

My mother still try to spare the children those images -she watches the news only sparingly. But we asked them to help gather the clothes they can spare for their less fortunate cousins in Marikina.

We also explain that while some things like nature's power remain daunting, there are some things like political will remain wanting.

If we can calculate that stepping back can help us escape the wind-shoved rain on a balcony, we can surmise that good planning can help us avoid tragedy that a typhoon like Ondoy innocuously brought to bear on our people.