Government complacency kills

Apparently, if government heeded the findings of a study done 32 years ago, people shouldn’t even be living in those deadly subdivisions in Marikina. Felino Palafox Jr., a leading Filipino environmental planner, told Business Mirror and ANC that government had been warned about the serious consequences of allowing residential subdivisions in those places that experienced Metro Manila’s worst flooding in memory.

“Some are saying the flooding is an act of God. It’s not. It’s neglect on the part of the government,” Palafox told the BusinessMirror. Palafox was part of a task force that studied land use policy options known as the Metro Manila Transport, Land Use and Development Planning Project (Mmetroplan). Its report already cited the Marikina Valley as among the areas deemed “unsuitable for development.”

“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 this would happen because of the flooding in the same month in 1970,” Palafox told Business Mirror.

Good money was spent on the study which was ignored by a succession of governments from Marcos to Arroyo. It was a World Bank-funded study on a land-use plan that was finalized by Hong Kong-based consulting firm Freeman Fox and Associates. “Dahil hindi sinunod ’yun, parang massacre ang nangyari,” Palafox told Business Mirror.

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.”

“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.

In other words, the only development that is safe and viable in that part of Marikina where Provident Village is located is the nearby Loyola Memorial Park. Or maybe, that part of Metro Manila could be a kind of Central Park with trees and recreational areas that would provide the lungs for a vast urban area that is constantly gasping for clean air. But not houses or factories.

In a blog, UP environmental scientists agree. “Hazards specialists think that the disaster is largely due in fact to Metro Manila’s unregulated urban sprawl… There is likely a need to revisit our land use planning schemes… Hydrological assessments of how much water can city streets carry needs to be done ASAP.”

Things were not always this bad in Manila and its environs. Manila was a flourishing, elegant entrepôt for centuries, but in recent times civic planning has been more haphazard as the population has boomed, TIME magazine observed in its latest issue that reported on last weekend’s flood. Much of what Palafox and the UP scientists are saying was echoed by another expert interviewed by TIME magazine.

Lambert Ramirez, executive director of the National Institute for Policy Studies, a Manila-based think tank, told TIME much of the blame for poor urban management ought to be leveled at the government.

“There’s no coordinated policy for cleaning up garbage. There’s no political will to get even simple things done,” he says. Ramirez spoke to TIME while salvaging appliances and valuables from his own flooded home.

To be fair, the private sector shares with government a good part of the blame for the calamity. Profit-hungry property developers must have exerted political pressure as well as bribed enough officials to get clearances to develop subdivisions in those areas already identified to be too dangerous for human habitation.

Now, the victims who lost loved ones and property last weekend will have to suffer some more in terms of diminished property values.

Even if they decide to sell their property and move somewhere safer, they will have to suffer a drastic decline in market value.

Market analysts interviewed by Business World confirm that property prices in areas in Metro Manila that were hardest hit by floods triggered by tropical storm Ondoy are likely to fall, as developers and buyers would think twice before investing in those locations.

Prince Christian R. Cruz, senior economist of online research house Global Property Guide, told BusinessWorld that developers too could adopt a wait-and-see position, as the government could impose regulations for projects in flood-prone areas. “After the Cherry Hills (disaster in Antipolo) for example, government came out with stricter regulations for building foundation (for projects on sloped areas)… Now, (regulators might demand better) flood control systems,” he said.

Mr. Cordero, meanwhile, said that those areas would be off the map for some investors for some time. “We were talking to some investors and, at this point, it was an eye-opener for them… It would eventually go back to normal. But in short term, they would take out Cainta and Marikina from their priorities,” he said.

But where will people go? Analysts think the real estate projects south of Manila will benefit in the interim. But eventually, given the scarcity of space in Metro Manila, property developers and buyers would have to come back to the eastern areas. Palafox, whose study deemed the Marikina Valley as one of the areas unsuitable to property development, said the recent calamity should goad the government to undertake better-designed preventive steps.

“It will happen again. This is not the first time and this would not be the last time. Maybe the intensity of rainfall was the first, but the floods happened before,” he said “Lessons are to be learned, for sure, but these have been taught three decades ago,” Palafox said.

Government complacency and private developers’ greed combine to form a lethal brew, a taste of which we felt last weekend.

Our problem, as one reactor to the blog of the UP Scientists puts it, is our inability to learn our lessons. “If only Imperial Manila paid a little attention to ‘provincial’ Iloilo and Kalibo after Frank’s devastation, they could have learned a lesson or two, and Ondoy the disaster – not Ondoy the ‘weak’ storm – could have been less disastrous. Remember Frank, not Katrina.”

So, in summary… there are areas which should be declared unfit for humans to live in regardless of the cost on the assumption that one human life is more valuable than even a billion pesos. And because such calamities are a fact of life, government’s contingency planning must always be up to par.

At the very least, someone like Gibo Teodoro should be able to more than pretend he is charge. Whoever plays his role in the future must at least know what agencies or entities have rubber boats and other emergency equipment needed to quickly respond to an unfolding crisis.

Let us not forget these lessons. But based on experience we will forget to make the right priorities once the sun starts shining… only to remember these lessons when the next big flood or calamity happens… and that would be too late to do anyone any good. –Boo Chanco (The Philippine Star)