El Niño presents an opportunity
Today, we are reeling from an unusually hot and humid temperature. Our farm lands are parched. The soil has caked dry. Most agricultural plants have withered. The green vegetation has turned brown and dry and the animals that normally feed on it have begun to suffer. I have witnessed that the two open wells I dug for my neighbors in Barangay Paril (one well is their source of potable water and the other for non-drinking purpose) are barely enough for their needs even if I requested them last month yet to conserve the depleting volume of water. Yes today, my neighbors have to share among them whatever is little from the diminishing fountain.
My small property in Paril abuts the river. When I bought this land to convert it into a small garden, the water was abundant as it flowed through a wide expanse of a river bed. At certain spots, the water was knee-high and in others, waist-deep. El Niño, in its supposed mild level, has drastically changed the condition. At present, the river is no longer the gushing stream that it was. It has been reduced to an alarming trickle. Large portions of its bed are dry and where children once swam, people now walk on.
We may not be able do much with this adverse climate but certainly we cannot just sit down and accept the situation without doing anything. The effects of this warm weather open to options that are unavailable in normal times. When writers talk about silver linings of stormy clouds, they also inadvertently refer a condition of the present mind. Indeed, why don’t we take advantage of this phenomenon and do something which is difficult to do during the kind of normal weather we usually have.
Here is an example. The government has declared the existence of the kind of climactic disturbance that is resulting to the present calamity. With such declaration, some portions of our revenues are made available to address the calamity monies which are otherwise untouchable unless disasters arise. Nobody will disagree if public funds are used to take the dried muck and silt from the once river bed. By doing so, we can deepen the water ways and remove all avulsions, debris and other deposits that impede the flow of water.
It will just take a vivid imagination and focused concern of our officials to make use of the dry weather to prepare for the inevitable change of weather. We are sure that after the El Niño an entirely different climate will come. There will be storms and floods. That is the kind of weather we expect. It is inescapable. Rather than concentrate our meager resources to fight El Niño, let our leaders train their efforts on the immediate future.
Because the city’s resources are not without limit, the leadership needs to understand which projects need to be prioritized.
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