Things We Did Not Learn From the Flood

This one I got from the Busi­ness Mir­ror. My work con­stantly reit­er­ates how there are really no such things as acci­dents. “Acci­dents”, as we know them, are really due to many man-made fac­tors: lack of train­ing, a lack of sys­tems, or pro­ce­dures to fol­low, and/or plain old stu­pid­ity. This is one of those things. 32 years ago, there was a study that showed how Marik­ina is unsuit­able for development.

We did not lis­ten to that study. And so it is proven for the nth time, there really are no acci­dents.

Gov­ern­ment study fore­saw flood–Palafox
http://​busi​ness​mir​ror​.com​.ph/​h​o​m​e​/​t​o​p​-​n​e​w​s​/​1​6​6​1​0​-​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​-​s​t​u​d​y​-​f​o​r​e​s​a​w​-​f​l​o​o​d​p​a​l​a​f​o​x​.​h​tml

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.