TAYTAY, Rizal – Local officials are having a hard time putting in place flood mitigating measures unless the Laguna de Bay and its tributaries are rid of its sediments, says Mayor Joric Gacula.
In a statement, Gacula admits that Taytay is a low-lying area and as such is prone to flooding – but not to a magnitude they recently had.
“Mababa ang level ng Taytay, and that makes us vulnerable to flooding – pero not to the magnitude that we’re into now. We’re literally submerged under water because the water coming from the upland is spilling from all over. Hindi na kaya ng mga waterways na dinadaluyan nito. Plus the heavily silted Laguna de Bay,” Gacula said.
The local chief executive said that Laguna de Bay and the rivers that flow out of the lake were already heavily silted and needed to undergo massive de-silting.
“Our flood control projects are in place. So as our mitigating measures. Pero these were all literally decimated because of the heavily silted lake and waterways,” Gacula said.
Gacula recalls that during the term of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, there was a proposed P18-billion de-silting project that was proposed before. The excess soil and sediment from this massive de-silting project were supposed to be used to build a circumferential road around Laguna de Bay.
However, the project was scrapped in 2016.
Interestingly, the Philippine government was ordered to pay close to one billion pesos in damages after former President Benigno Aquino III unilaterally cancelled the P18-billion flood control venture — the Laguna Lake Rehabilitation Project.
No less than the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ruled that “former President Benigno Aquino III’s unilateral cancellation in 2011 of a Belgian firm’s P18-billion flood-control venture, the Laguna Lake Rehabilitation Project, was illegal and unfair.”
ISCID ordered the Philippine government to pay the Belgian dredging firm Baagerwerken Decloedt En Zoon (BDZ) P800 million, plus interest costs from 2011 onwards.
Gacula also floated the idea of putting up catchment basins where floodwater could be stored and released during the dry season. He said that this will prevent floods in the plains area and also make use of rain water instead of allowing it to just flow uselessly to the sea.
Aside from Taytay, other lakeshore towns have been submerged under deep flood water after Typhoon Ulysses’ heavy downpour last week. Close to a hundred thousand were forced to flee as the floodwater rapidly rose.
Houses were shattered, roads rendered impassable, communications were cut and there isn’t enough money to defray the cost of rehabilitating the traces of destruction that Typhoon Ulysses left.
Interestingly, the Taytay Mayor said that they still could cope up in providing help to families who lost their homes by providing temporary place, food and medicine for those who have gone sick at the local government-designated shelters, until the flood water level finally goes down to tolerable level.
Gacula, in an earlier television interview, said during the aftermath of Typhoon Ulysses that Laguna de Bay and the rivers that flow out of the lake were already heavily silted and needed to undergo massive de-silting.
“A much deeper Laguna de Bay and its tributaries would relieve residents of Metro Manila, Rizal and Laguna of the flooding that happened,” Gacula quipped.