With modern engineering, bridges have been built over rivers and seas without the structures sinking into the bottom with normal use.
So it shouldn’t take rocket science to build flood control infrastructure that can actually withstand flooding. With billions in public funds spent on dikes, slope protection and other structural interventions for flood mitigation, in addition to supposedly regular river dredging and desilting, flooding in the country should have eased many years ago.
And yet much of Metro Manila was submerged again in heavy floods yesterday as monsoon-enhanced rains inundated the capital region as well as other areas of Luzon notably Bulacan, ground zero of the flood control corruption scandal.
Last week, a two-month-old river wall in Marilao, Bulacan collapsed amid the monsoon rains combined with a high tide. Building a flood control structure that can’t withstand a high tide is downright criminal.
In Tarlac City, a portion of a newly built river dike in Barangay San Isidro was also destroyed last Monday. Personnel of the Department of Public Works and Highways district office patched up the damage with sandbags.
Maybe the DPWH should just use sandbags for flood control, since concrete structures can’t seem to withstand flooding and carry out the purpose for which they are built. It will save taxpayers billions.
President Marcos, in his third State of the Nation Address on July 22, 2024, had crowed that under his watch, over 5,500 flood control projects had been completed across the country, with another 5,000 ongoing.
Two days after that SONA, in a portent of the scandal that would later erupt, the southwest monsoon enhanced by Super Typhoon Carina dumped heavy rains and spawned torrential flooding in much of Luzon including Metro Manila.
In his fourth SONA last year, the President acknowledged anomalies in the flood control projects, as he launched a shame campaign against those who have looted public funds through budgeting acrobatics involving public works.
That shame campaign is a work in progress, while the flood control program is in limbo. The consequences are evident as the country grapples with the monsoons and tropical cyclones.
These weather disturbances hit the country regularly, and the measures for prevention and mitigation should have been in place years ago. That this has not happened can be blamed on endemic corruption, inefficiency and indifference to national interest.