Flood politics

“VACATE YOUR homes, evacuate now, don’t put your families at risk.”

So appealed Gov. Lilia G. Pineda to residents living along the banks of the Pampanga River in the wake of Typhoon Lando last week. Even as Pampanga was spared the full brunt of Lando, and notwithstanding the residents’ resiliency to floods, the inundations being already part of their existence.

Still, the governor persisted, to the point of instructing mayors of the towns traversed by the Pampanga River to “reason” with their constituents and, if necessary, implement forced evacuation.

Pineda knew all too well that the torrential rains Lando dumped up north could only cascade as rampaging floodwaters to Pampanga, further downstream to Bulacan onto Manila Bay. Which, indeed, happened – submerging swathes of San Luis, Candaba, Apalit, San Simon, Macabebe and Masantol in Pampanga, Calumpit and Hagonoy in Bulacan. Necessitating massive evacuation, relief and rescue operations.

So as it was with Typhoons Pedring and Quiel in 2011, as well as the other typhoons and the southwest monsoon rains that hit Pampanga and Central Luzon, so it is now with Lando: The devastation to infrastructure and crops, the misery at the evacuation sites, the dead and the wounded, the depletion of the LGUs’ calamity funds.

“We cannot go on like this, at the approach and aftermath of every typhoon that comes our way,” Pineda said. “We need a mindshift in dealing with calamities – from instinctive reaction to pro-active pre-emption.”

Her take on the situation: Start with the geographical givens: the upper reaches of the Rio Grande de Pampanga from its headwaters in the Sierra Madre; its main tributaries, the Peñaranda and the Coronel-Santor Rivers in Nueva Ecija and the Rio Chico River in the Cordilleras and Cagayan; down to the Bagbag River and Angat River in Bulacan and the Candaba Swamp basin. Plus the ecological state of the forests and the mountains contiguous to the rivers.

Second in Pineda’s Pampanga River agenda is the inspection of all flood-mitigating infrastructures such as the decades-old setback levee, the unceasingly eroding  Arnedo Dike, the heavily silted Labangan Channel and the much ballyhooed Pampanga Delta Development Project River for their structural integrity, as well as current – no pun intended –  (in)effectiveness.

Third, a review of the myriad studies by government offices as well as international aid agencies undertaken on the Pampanga River and the utilization of the Candaba Swamp as containment area or reservoir. High time too to reassess the proposal to revive the defunct Pampanga River Control System which was tabled in the Central Luzon Regional Development Council in the wake of the habagat-caused flooding in 2012.    

Fourth, a summit on the Pampanga River among concerned government agencies such as the National Economic and Development Authority, the Department of Public Works and Highways, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, the National Irrigation Administration, the governors of provinces traversed by the river, the Japan International Cooperation Agency and other aid agencies, with “flood specialists” as resource persons. With a program of action – “measurable, time-bounded, applicable, funded” – as its end-result.

Basic but a well-defined agenda there, Governor Pineda laid out. For a start, she has asked that it be a talking-point priority in the coming meeting of the Regional Development Council.

With the sun up and the floodwaters fast receding though, the urgency of Pineda’s agenda may just wane and, as the usual case, be relegated to the RDC backburner.

To keep the tides of enthusiasm rolling, so to speak, here’s an unsolicited advice to the governor from this observer: Make the Pampanga River a national issue in the 2016 elections.

The millions of votes from Central Luzon make a tsunami any presidential or senatorial candidate will be most happy to be inundated in.

It will certainly help – tremendously – to convince aspirants to national positions that with over one million votes in Pampanga, Pineda is re-electing unopposed.