EDITORIAL - From plastic bags to gabion dams

It is already almost summer (the Pagasa has not officially declared its arrival yet) but officials in Mandaue City are not talking about the heat. They are talking about rains and floods and of building mini dams to catch runoff water from the highland barangays before they reach the lowlands. To those unfamiliar with the city, Mandaue is notorious for sinking in the rain quickly.

Maybe it is the topography, the lay of the land, so to speak. "Most of the barangays in Mandaue City are low-lying," said one official. "And two major rivers run through the city," another official hastened to add. Or maybe it is just tough luck. "Close to eleven barangays (maybe ten or nine?) in Mandaue receive floodwaters from Cebu City," said the first official.

The foregoing conversation is serious stuff. Aside from geography, there is economics there – building dams, even the small so-called gabion dams, will have to entail some cost. This will be in addition to any drainage systems being planned, built, expanded or rehabilitated to provide some form of flood intervention, all of which will entail even more cost.

Maybe it is good that the conversation has turned serious. Because for a while there, the talk in Mandaue when it came to floods had been frivolous. Of all the things that can go wrong when it rains, it was the poor plastic bag that became the immediate and convenient scapegoat for the flooding. Plastic bags cause floods, the verdict went. So out went all plastic bags in the city, banned every day for life.

The plastic bag, of course, could not speak in its own defense. It could not refute, for instance, the accusation that it was responsible for clogging up the city's waterways, despite the fact that there was no way a plastic bag can get into a waterway on its own unless a human being put it there on purpose. But it is too much of a hassle to go after human beings. They resist, protest, and otherwise make so much fuss. Besides, they are voters who could make things complicated later.

It is so much better to go after the hapless, uncomplaining plastic bag. The problem is, after several months since the poor plastic bag's banishment, it has become abundantly clear that it had little or nothing to do with the floods. For the floods kept coming even with the plastic bag gone. So maybe it is the topography after all, the lay of the land, so to speak. Or maybe it is just plain tough luck. In fact the rain could be what is causing these floods. But that is being frivolous.