What Manila needs are arks and arkitects

A woman cuddles her daughter as she rides an improvised raft to a higher ground to avoid the floods in Pasig City last Aug. 9. A fresh deluge forced more evacuations along fast-rising rivers in the Philippine capital, as the city and surrounding areas struggled to deal with widespread flooding triggered by nearly two weeks of relentless rains. PHOTO/AP

NEW YORK—From now on, all Metro Manila households should be required to have a boat. Better still, every barangay must have an ark. As news reports and the social media keep making abundantly clear, the torrential rains over the past two weeks that have fallen on the city have resulted in an all-too-familiar and terrible scenario: lives lost, homes swept away, small businesses wrecked, work days lost (especially devastating to contractual laborers), the spread of illness, and so on. The latest spate of floods to hit the capital region may not have been as horrific as those generated by Ondoy in 2009 but they remind us that, almost certainly due to global warming (though this isn’t the only factor), weather patterns have changed in a way that renders Manila and other coastal cities around the globe even more vulnerable. And in a vulnerable region like Metro Manila, the most vulnerable are the poor. Those who have the least suffer the most.

The Pinoy, being indomitable, might exclaim bahala na when faced with the dreaded baha, or floods, somewhat consoled by the knowledge that the city, being built by a bay and below sea level in certain areas, has always been prone to such. In my childhood, you knew to avoid certain areas of Manila when it rained cats and dogs, like España, especially around the pontifical university of UST, and Sta. Mesa. Baha!  was the only word you needed to utter and people immediately got the picture. Quezon City, being further away from Manila Bay and on higher ground, rarely experienced floods. And one never heard of Marikina being swamped. But that’s changing now. Now, it seems, no area is safe from the ever more frequent flooding.

As predictable as the baha are the hand-wringing and the angry calls for flood control, the preservation of watersheds, the resettlement of the urban poor congregated along riverbanks and esteros, and a stricter implementation of environmental policies to greatly reduce industrial pollution that clogs up the National Capital Region’s waterways.

Linked up to the dozens of tributaries of both the Pasig River and Laguna de Bay, built in colonial times, the esteros were meant to control the floodwaters and the tidal currents generated by Manila Bay. Canals that served to transport both people and goods and to ensure the passage of excess water to the sea, they were also used for bathing, laundering and even for drinking water as, indeed, José Rizal made clear in the early passages of Noli Me Tangere.

It is difficult to imagine putting the esteros to such uses today, given their disgusting state. Every time I pass an estero, I deliberately avoid looking at it, not wishing to gaze upon its murkiness and the filth that clogs it. Essential to how the metropolitan area manages (or not) to keep its streets dry, esteros today seem to be receptacles of all the city’s detritus, even sometimes of its dead, the disappeared or salvaged, rather than the vibrant and life-enhancing channels they once must have been.

In one study made of the esteros in the San Miguel and Quiapo districts, published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Management of June 2011, Glorina P. Orozco and Macrina T. Zafaralla state that “Esteros are polluted creeks that drain to river systems like Pasig River. … The Spanish term ‘estero’ means estuary or little river and was probably coined by the early Manila settlers during the Spanish era (Cojuangco 2007). The original pristine freshwater condition of the esteros has markedly deteriorated due to urbanization (Quismundo 2004; Uy 2006; Calumpita 2007) and many have been destroyed and disappeared (Cojuangco 2007). Extensive pollution and clogging of these esteros are causing extensive flooding in Metro Manila (Carcamo 2007).”

Everyone agrees that the region’s approximately 400 esteros need to be cleaned up. Not everyone agrees on how. Earlier this year, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources embarked on a clean-up campaign, a repeat of a 2010 drive that sought to unclog these canals in 100 days. Obviously these campaigns haven’t prevented flooding. What’s needed is not publicity driven, short-term endeavors but a sustained, serious program of regular cleaning and maintenance. A usual target in the blame-game are the poor who live along the esteros, many of whose families have lived there for decades. They are seen as the problem. Such a critique avoids any discussion of the economy and its endemic flaws that result in institutionalized income inequality, leading to high levels of poverty; it forestalls any discussion of how the poor can continue to live where they are but in humane fashion, with decent public housing.

Today’s situation is hardly new; even in colonial days, the esteros were not always properly maintained. From a 1905 report, as quoted by Prof. Leonardo Liongson of the University of the Philippines: “No system of sewerage, and only a very limited system of drainage, located mostly within the Walled City, and also near the banks of the Pasig River on the north side, has ever been constructed in Manila. … Intramuros, being the highest and most completely improved part of the city, has naturally fared the best, and is generally well-provided with storm-water drains …  All drains located within the Walled City discharge either into the river or into the moat, as these drains during the late years have been made use of for disposing sewage from dwellings and possibly overflow from cesspools, the tendency has been to convert the moat into an open sewer … that nearly all solid matter from the sewage is deposited and the odors from which cause an intolerable nuisance and a menace to public health, especially during the dry seasons. The conditions found to exist in the moat are also applicable in a greater or less extent to all esteros located within the city for the reason that they directly or indirectly receive a very large percentage of all the filth accumulations from the districts through which they pass. …”

Presumably to prevent the spread of disease, the moat was filled in within a three-month period in 1905, when the country was already occupied by the United States. Not long after the landfill was converted into a golf course.

In addition to dredging the esteros and maintaining their usefulness, the heavy siltation of Laguna de Bay (the largest freshwater lake in the country, and the third largest in Southeast Asia) needs to be addressed. Its overflow wreaks havoc on coastal towns and cities in Rizal and Laguna. Good to know there is a 352-billion-peso Department of Public Works and Highways’ master plan to construct a 7.2 km. spillway so that the overflow runs to Manila Bay.  On the other hand, plans have been as perennial as the floods. What seems to be lacking, as always, is the political will. For as long as those most affected by the floods are the masa, it’s a sure bet that any solution, no matter how technically brilliant, will take ages to enact. Only when the expensive heels of the moneyed and perfumed class are kissed treacherously by rising floodwaters will any real progress be made. In this regard, then, it is the rich rather than the wretched of the earth that constitute the problem.

Copyright L.H. Francia 2012