MOST OF Metro Manila is under water and all that the government could do is to blame the volume of rain?
In a news article posted on the ABS-CBN website, lawyer Romando Artes, in his capacity as Metropolitan Manila Development Authority chairman, bragged about the agency’s clean up operations.
If that’s true, well and good. But the MMDA could go beyond cosmetic solutions like cleaning up debris, clearing sidewalks, directing traffic and collecting garbage.
MMDA is supposed to be working on an honest-to-goodness development designed to keep Metro Manila clean, orderly and livable. Speaking of livable, a community — or even an alley, could not qualify as livable if inundated under flood water.
For one, water isn’t supposed to stay long in Manila which is about two meters above sea level on top of the fact that Metro Manila has a wide network of tributaries leading to the Manila Bay.
There’s just one glitch though — rivers have been narrowed and silted, canals clogged with garbage, while creeks and estuaries have gone missing.
In a paper entitled The Esteros of Manila: Urban Drainage a Century Since (2000), its author, the late academician Leonardo Liongson described esteros as “an estuarial network of narrow tidal creeks defining the Pasig River delta.”
Allow me to quote a Vera Files article embarking on historical facts:
“The San Juan River and the esteros of Binondo, Quiapo, and San Miguel are “the principal waterways” on the north bank of the Pasig River; the Estero de Pandacan is ‘the only significant tributary’ from the south bank.
Other waterways drain directly into Manila Bay such as the Estero de Vitas in the north and the Estero Tripa Gallina which joins the Parañaque River in the south. The esteros used to be interconnected and reached the river estuaries of Bulacan and Pampanga.
In 1903, there were “over thirty esteros or branches of esteros within the city limit, notes Liongson and pointed out that an inland lagoon connected with the Tondo tributary of the Estero de Binondo in an 1898 map had disappeared in 1987 maps, replaced by the Tutuban railyards of the Philippine National Railways.
The upstream branches of the Estero de San Miguel that used to drain the UST campus and other parts of Sampaloc have also disappeared. To this day, the area is known for developing flash floods amidst sudden downpours.”
No less than the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) admitted that Metro Manila is crisscrossed by at least 237.
Whoa! That’s a lot, maybe more than enough to carry the floodwater to Manila Bay. But I doubt if the MMDA would be able to trace 30. I’m not even sure if they’re aware of this information.
If only the MMDA could locate and recover all the 237 missing esteros, Metro Manila floods would somehow be less of a concern.