Posted on Monday, January 27, 2003

Fears of flooding buttress protest
against Laguna Lake dike project

By Patricia L. Adversario, Senior Reporter 

First of two parts

Early next month, some 200 bancas will slice through the brackish waters of Laguna de Bay with an urgent message for Malacañang — stop the construction of the P3.3-billion dike along the north Laguna lakeshore.

Farmers, fisherfolk, and fishpen operators from 27 towns along Laguna Lake plan to converge along the riverbank of Malacañang to stage on water their dramatic resistance against the construction of the lakeshore road dike.

At the outset, the objective of the flood control project is clear: protect some 600,000 residents in the low coastal areas of Taguig, Pateros and Pasig in Metro Manila, and Taytay and Cainta in Rizal, from floodwaters coming from the lake which could take four months to subside.

But lack of consultations with the affected communities and uncoordinated go­vernment policies have put the project under a cloud.

Misinformation abounds about the role of the dike and how it will affect the lake and the people who live around it, partly because the affected residents have been left out of the consultation process.

The government is learning that it has to change its approach. It used to be that informing the community about the project was enough. What if the community has different views about govern­ment’s plans?

The results have been expensive. The project, which was suspended from November 2001 to April 2002 because of protests from residents, has incurred almost half-a-billion pesos in damages because of the delay.

The project, which started in late 2000, was to have been completed by 2004. The com­pletion date has since been moved to 2006.

The cost of the project’s suspension does not include costs in the delay of the construction of the proposed Napindan Bridge in Taytay for which almost P20 million had been spent. Construction of the bridge was suspended because of protests from informal settlers who claim the bridge will dislocate them.

Massive pillars of steel that had been bored into the lakebed are rusting in the lake waters. There was more evidence of an abandoned construction site on the riverbank where piles of rusting steel trusses lie covered with weeds.

10-year-old ECC

Excluding the bridge sections, the road dike will stretch 9.5 km from Lower Bicutan, Taguig, to west of the Mangahan Flood­way. The dike has an average height of 3.5 meters and will be built with a gravel-paved road for light vehicles.

Also to be built are four regulation ponds, four pumping stations, floodgates and two bridges crossing the Napindan River and the Mangahan Floodway.

Funds for the project came from the Japanese government as part of the 21st Yen Loan Package granted in March 1997. Because of tedious pre-qua­lification and bidding proce­dures, it was only in September 2000 that cons­truc­tion work started.

Almost 10 years after the environmental compliance certi­ficate (ECC) for the project was issued in June 1993, environmental experts now question the validity of the certificate. Con­di­tions have changed since then and the process needs to be reviewed.

One critical change is the dra­matic increase in the number of residents on or near the areas where the dike will be constructed.

From only 280 families, the number has grown to almost 2,000 families, most of them, living on the floodplain of Lupang Arenda in Taytay and the Mangahan Floodway.

The UP School of Environ­mental Science and Ma­nagement (SESAM)  in Los Baños, in a report to the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) in November last year, said that this change will influence the extent of impact and the cost-benefit ratio of the project.

For example, the Bay Breeze Subdivision, an upscale housing subdivision with about 220 concrete houses in Taguig, lies outside the protected area of the road dike. The possible damage to property has not yet been included in the social impact assessment.

The SESAM, which reviewed the documents that were the basis for the ECC, also questioned the scope of the environmental impact assessment (EIA), which was conducted from 1989-1992. It noted that the EIA was limited to the five municipalities of Pasig, Pateros, Taguig, Cainta and Taytay that would benefit from the flood control project.

The EIA did not look into the biophysical and socioeconomic conditions of the nearby Laguna lakeshore towns, like Biñan, Sta. Rosa, Calamba and Los Baños, and “totally eliminated the possibility of causing increased flooding in these areas,” said Dr. Antonio J. Alcantara, dean and professor of SESAM, who led the team that conducted the review.

“There is a probability that communities adjacent to the road dike project will experience increased flooding at least for a duration of time than they used to have,” said Alcantara.

The EIA assumed that at a lake water level of 12.5 meters when floodwater is pumped out of the road dike protected area into the lake, the level would only rise by 8 millimeters. But lakeshore residents said that even at 12 meters, they already experience flooding.

Questions on water level

At the heart of the controversy — as well as the source of misinformation — are questions on what will be the water level after the dike is built.

The dike’s design places the highest level at 13.8 meters, based on a 40-year flood probability.

Fisherfolk suspect that the dike is being built to maintain the level at 12.5m (average water level) or 13.8m.

Liserio Alon-Alon, 71, a fisherman and president of the Taguig Coalition Against the Dike, said raising the water level is part of a government’s plan to tap the lake as a water source for Metro Manila and the industrial towns around the lake.

He said the lake’s waters will also be kept at high levels to provide continuous water supply for cooling power plants and industrial facilities near the lake. Alon-Alon said this shift in lake use would kill the fishing industry because salt water from Manila Bay that flows through the Napindan River can no longer reach the lake.

Salt water from Manila Bay can only enter if the water level at Laguna Bay is lower than the former. The DPWH, through the Napindan Hydraulic Control Structures, controls the flow.

Alicia E. Bongco, project coordinator of the LLDA’s Sustainable Development of the Laguna de Bay Environment, confirmed plans by LLDA to build a freshwater reservoir on the lake, but also stressed that Laguna de Bay will still be a multipurpose lake. “The lake will be used both for fisheries and for freshwater supply,” she said.

Farmers and fisherfolk also maintain that the dike will still cause prolonged flooding. It does not help the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) that it had built the two existing flood control systems along Laguna Lake — the Napindan Hydraulic Control Structures and the Mangahan Floodway.

Residents from Taguig, Bicutan and Taytay, said they continue to experience long-term flooding in spite of these two flood-control projects.

“If we go by track record, any flood-control project by the DPWH means floods,” said one resident.

Dr. Leonardo Q Liongson, director of the National Hydra­ulic Research Center based in UP Diliman, however, said that any “significant increase in the water level of the lake will not be caused by the dike. The flooding will come from the Mangahan Flood­way.“

The floodway was built to divert the floodwaters from Marikina River that normally flows into Pasig River to mitigate the flooding in Manila.

“Because the water level in the lake seems to be the lynchpin that underlies the eloquence of the daily life of the fishermen and farmers, any amount of uncertainty about its future value after the project is completed would be a cause for big questions or total project rejection,” said SESAM’s Dr. Tolentino B. Moya, a soil and water engineer.

Rodrigo I. delos Reyes, DPWH’s project manager for the road dike, explains that with the dike, water that would otherwise have flooded the five towns would be confined in the lake. The displaced water will find its way to the other areas and should increase by only two inches the water level in these areas.

To most residents, it is still not clear what this two inches of additional water means in the outlying areas. “What is clear is at least one area along the lake will be saved,” said Delos Reyes.

Such piecemeal solution does not hold water for those who advocate an integrated develop­ment plan for the lake.

Said Dr. Moya: “We can learn from the people who live there. The simple folk look at the lake as an ecosystem. Everything is connected. They’ve got a systemic view of how this dike relates to the entire lake, and not only to the five towns that will be protected.”

Second Part