Weak infra

Each calamity that comes along reminds us about how weak our infrastructure backbone is. Little wonder we are now told that our best export opportunity is peddling coconut water to the global market.

Typhoon Pedring blacked out much of the metropolitan area and populous provinces nearby. Power lines were brought down and floods prevented repair crews from getting to them in a timely manner. A day after the storm, many areas remained without power.

Considering we sit on the path of typhoons, shouldn’t we have started a program years ago to transfer our aerial power lines underground?

There has been a perfect excuse for not doing so: cost.

Given Metro Manila’s size, it will require billions to build an underground transmission grid traversing built-up areas, ridding us of the ugly wires dangling dangerously overhead. The costs of building a modern, flood-proof underground grid will be passed on to consumers, compounding already intolerable power costs.

Maybe the economics of doing do has now become forbidding. We built a megalopolis without much foresight. We allowed the urban sprawl to happen in the most chaotic fashion. We are all victims of unplanned urbanization.

But should we simply concede to that fate simply because it is too costly to do anything about it?

If we do so, then the calamities afflicting the metropolitan area will compound as we go along. The costs will continue to rise. The economic dislocation will continue to mount.

Laguna de Bay is a case in point. Twenty-two rivers bring water to this lake. In addition, the Manggahan Floodway diverts more water to what has become a large water impoundment area. Only the heavily silted Pasig River provides a drain.

Urban planner Jun Palafox likens this to a bathtub with 22 faucets and a clogged drain. Inevitably, the communities around the rim will flood.

It turns out that plans drawn up during the seventies provided for a “Parañaque floodway” to help drain the lake. That was never built, presumably because it was too costly to do so. Today, the path of the floodway is heavily built up. We will have to tear up posh subdivisions to install this vital facility to help drain the lake into Manila Bay. Right-of-way litigation alone will take decades, not to mention the cost of buying built-up real estate.

Again, economic realities overtook planning capacity. All possible solutions are swamped by the factor of cost.

 A Belgian-assisted project to dredge Laguna de Bay in order to increase its capacity to hold water was scrapped by this administration on the grounds that it will provide only short-term relief. The Palace took the option of no relief at all.

A longer-term solution is to build a circumferential road around Laguna de Bay. The elevated road will serve as a dike and will accept material dredged from the lake. It will add to the road space we so desperately need in this metropolis to relieve traffic congestion.

 It will, of course, be expensive. It will take years to complete. The incumbent elected officials will no longer be in office to take credit for the project when it is finally done. There is no political reward for the effort.

The storm surge we saw last Monday tells us that the seawall along Manila Bay has appropriately aged and must soon be reinforced. A break in the seawall flooded Hotel Sofitel and forced the evacuation of guests. The US Embassy was shut down. Staff had to be evacuated as well. Scenic Roxas Boulevard monetarily rejoined the sea.

Heavy rains brought by Typhoon Pedring caused two small dams to break. Because the dams were small, the damage was slight.

What will happen when the big dams break? About half of the big dams in Central and Northern Luzon need either to be reinforced or completely rebuilt. They are old structures that will soon become unserviceable. Worse, they pose real public hazards.

These dam systems were built before deforestation happened. They were not designed to hold as much water as they now have to. At the most inconvenient times, at the height of storms, water needs to be released from them, compounding flooding problems downstream.

Downstream from these dams, large communities have flourished. A major dam breaking will claim many lives.

Do we have a master plan for rehabilitating Luzon’s complex (and precarious) system of dams and water impounding facilities? I have not seen one.

We all know the Camanava area is quickly sinking beneath the tides. When the fishponds of Dagat-dagatan were filled and built up during the seventies, the pre-existing town became the flood basin.

As a native of Malabon, I have waited for decades for the much-touted “mega-dike” to be built. That proceeded at an exceedingly slow pace.

Last month, a disingenuous DPWH engineer sent his crew into our yard to begin digging behind our restraining wall to build the dike, in the process undermining the existing wall’s foundation. The very next day, the wall collapsed, nearly washing away our home and flooding the town center.

 My first impulse was to organize a mob to lynch this engineer — but he had promptly disappeared. His crew eventually returned to lay down sandbags, a solution too puny to hold back the swollen Tullahan river.

Our nation’s economic prospects rest on the strength of our infrastructure backbone. Little wonder we are now down to imagining coconut water is our path to economic salvation.