Solved

MMDA chairman Francis Tolentino finally solved the problem of flooding. After careful sleuthing, he concludes the floods were the results of deliberate acts of sabotage by street waifs looking to push stranded vehicles for a fee.

Tolentino arrived at the amazing conclusion after finding a piece of plywood clogging a drain along Edsa. It had to be the handiwork of the street waifs who make money pushing cars out of the water or charging pedestrians using their makeshift footbridges. The whole city, if this conclusion holds, was flooded because a conspiracy of saboteurs were out to make a few pesos by producing misery for millions.

Rene Almendras, secretary to the Cabinet, enlarges the conspiracy theory to include households dumping trash on the waterways. They apparently connive either to force cancellations of classes or to avoid work.

With the conclusions of the two most brilliant members of the Aquino Cabinet, we can now be assured the floods disrupting the urban economy are not an engineering problem. Flooding is a police problem.

Now we know why Palace deputy spokesperson Abigail Valte declared that the floods are a local government problem. It is problem that should not perturb the President of the Republic.

The next time we fail to get to work or to get home after work, we should put the blame squarely on the PNP --- or on metropolitan mayors. To date, our gallant policemen have failed miserably in breaking up the conspiracy of waifs responsible for the floods. The local executives failed to field foot patrols to arrest those dumping waste onto waterways.

If Tolentino’s conclusions are valid, then there is really no need for flood control infrastructure: precisely the ones government failed to build. All we need is better surveillance of the drains. Maybe at some point, CCTV cameras might be installed to gaze into every manhole and observe all the gutters. That will, to great relief, be immensely cheaper than building dikes, dredging the lake or, heaven forbid, relocating 60,000 families living alongside the estuaries.

There is no longer a need for the MMDA to blame the DPWH, and for the latter to blame the former. There is no longer a need for the DILG to badger local executives into clearing their slums. There is definitely no need to blame President Aquino for cancelling the flood-control projects mapped out during the term of Gloria Arroyo.

Our wise and hardworking President was right after all. According to Tolentino’s conspiracy theory, the floods are not the result of deficient infrastructure, the gross failure of urban planning and the utter lack of proactive clearing of the waterways long before the rains came. All the large projects conjured during the previous administration were therefore unnecessary white elephants driven solely by greed.

Nevertheless, this government will still create its own master plan for the metropolitan area. That is the good news. The bad news is that the entire flood-mitigation program will be completed in 2035.

By that time, the demographers say, our total population will be about 125 million and the metropolitan area will have about 18 million concentrated in a tight river delta, with subsidence in both the north and south of it. That thriving 18 million denizens will have more cars and will likely use more water per capita than today’s 10 million.

No rush, Tolentino thinks. All we have to do is to keep the streets waifs from clogging the drains and households from dumping trash into our rivers.

Let us all hope Toletino’s theory holds water (excuse the pun). If it does not, then as we saw last Tuesday, schools will have to suspend classes and offices will have to dismiss their workers each time rain is predicted by our undermanned meteorology office. We might as well close down our economy during the rainy months.

Thursday last week, the City of Manila was watery hell for tens of thousands of students wading home and hundreds of thousands of office workers unable to find rides. Monday this week, Edsa transformed into a huge parking lot because of floods and C-5 was barely passable.

If Tolentino’s theory is false, our prospects turn more horrid. When the real typhoons come in the coming weeks, commuting in the city will only be by boat, of which there is not enough to go around. The metropolitan region will need to be renamed Waterworld. If that happens, Tolentino will be our Kevin Costner. He has the wardrobe for the role.

Shudder, therefore, if Tolentino is wrong. Pray twice as hard that he is right.

After the last two weeks, people now hesitate to leave home when rain warnings are up. All meetings are contingent on the weather. Kuya Kim Atienza is now the public’s celebrity.

Not all things are bad, though.

We might be unable to prevent flooding over the next quarter of a century, but we have better weather monitoring (at least until our last weatherman is pirated by foreign governments). We might be chronically unable to remove informal settlers clogging our riverbanks, but Mar Roxas is now into training the vulnerable communities in the fine art of evacuation.

To top it all, as Abigail Valte reminds us, we never had as much relief goods to give away as we have today. Lucky are those who will be evacuated, Dinky Soliman smiles upon them. They will not want for Lucky Me instant noodles.

So sit tight, everybody. Be calm. Wait to be evacuated.