Floods & my EPA education

Friday Oct. 25, 2024 – 7:20 a.m. “Sir, please help us. Our home has been flooded.” The message was followed by two short videos inside a dark house where you could barely see but the water already knee deep. Given that most of the Bicol provinces and many other places were equally flooded, what was so interesting about this case?

The second message, in Tagalog, says it all: “Ngaun lamang po nangyari sa amin ang ganito, gawa po ng bagong tayo subdivision malapit po sa amin, nagiba po ang pader ng subdivision dito po sa Bagumbayan, Tanauan City, Batangas.”

(This is the first time this happened due to a new subdivision development that was built near us. The wall of the subdivision collapsed, here in Bagumbayan, Tanauan City, Batangas.)

It seems that the subdivision wall was quite long and managed to gather so much water during the two-day downpour. The volume was so large that when the wall collapsed, it released enough water to the nearby barangay, where the ground was already soaked, thereby causing instant flooding.

Was it mere coincidence that for the second time in the last two years, our previously flood-free place at the LPL Compound in Barangay Inosluban, Lipa City, Batangas was again flooded. In 2023, we already called out the culprit being a new diversion road or access road cutting across a new subdivision development.

No one realized that the road, which was generally a blessing during the dry season, would end up becoming the equivalent of an irrigation canal during the wet season.

Another “coincidence” was that a new game fowl farm was recently established in front of our place and the tenant decided to replace an old gate at the corner of the lot with a hollow block wall. They were obviously concerned with security and rooster thieves.

As I mentioned earlier, the area was once again flooded last week up to waist deep. Just as the floodwaters threatened to enter the house of the caretaker, a loud crash was heard, and the once mighty wall was toppled over by the volume of water. No one realized that the reason the old rickety gate had steel bars at the bottom was so that rainwater or floodwater could pass under the gate and not build up inside the lot.

Everywhere in the Philippines that was hit by massive flooding, eyewitnesses and local residents all had a common list of suspects or people to blame: illegal loggers, illegal miners, land developers and, last but not least, corrupt politicians and government officials.

Without wanting to pin the tail on the donkey, or place blame, I am compelled to point out that based on my experience, the floodings inside LGUs could be avoided if the DENR and their local counterparts were actually trained and empowered to regulate and go tough on contractors, developers and builders.

*      *      *

While I was living in the US, I had the opportunity to observe how the Town Environmental Protection Office did things. They had shut down a big property development project for numerous violations and nothing could be done until the shutdown order was lifted.

Believing that the situation was impossible, the developer turned the project over to a group that took over distressed businesses. The first item on the agenda was to get the ban lifted and that entailed showing up at the office of a retired US Marine sergeant, who happened to be the head honcho as well.

I confessed complete and total ignorance on the subject matter, swore to do twice the effort to correct the problem as long as the officer was willing to give me the “to-do list.” His initial reply was, “You gotta be BS-ing me” but he agreed, nonetheless. That list and the explanations were the equivalent of an on-the-job short course of several months on applied environmental management and protection for me.

First and foremost, any developer or builder is required to submit a site plan and topography of the project site and the immediate area that may be directly or indirectly affected. Old or established trees need to be X feet or meters away from any digging or dredging related to the house, building or structure.

Disturbance of the terrain or the topography was generally not allowed, unlike here in the Philippines where developers and builders casually run a grader and backhoe and reshape the land and terrain. That will get you fined or jailed abroad.

You don’t disrupt the established flow of water on the general surface, and you most definitely would be fined and shut down for disturbing, disrupting or altering the flow of streams or natural canals. Come to think of it, while fences might be allowed, concrete walls were rare if any. That, as we now know, is to allow water flow and movement for wildlife.

Based on the details provided by the Environmental Protection Officer, we restored several areas that were disturbed by a grader, we had to throw in seed and mulch to reintroduce ground cover, we were required to clear small creeks and ponds of debris, and one big item required digging deep to reach a natural underground passage that had been blocked by road construction.

That required lots of high strength porous material draped across gravel several times to allow the water to continue passing under ground while an asphalt road was built over it. I spent several months putting up siltation control as well as watching vehicles that might track mud or debris into town roads.

If the DENR just did the same, we would have less flooding, etc.