HAGONOY, Bulacan—A Bulakenyo expatriate’s advocacy on dam safety and flood mitigation has been recognized by a US-based utilities company.
Based on an article published on the website of the Southern California Edison, Engineer Roderick Dela Cruz’s passion for public safety has contributed in saving lives on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.
The 42-year-old Dela Cruz is a senior engineer at SCE. He was born and raised in this coastal town of Bulacan.
SCE is one of the largest electric utilities in California, serving more than 14 million people in a 50,000 squaremile area of central, coastal and Southern California, excluding the City of Los Angeles and other cities.
Based on the article written by Bill Loving, SCE corporate communication writer, Dela Cruz’s journey in promoting public safety in the Philippines started when the country was devastated by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng in 2009.
In the years that followed, Dela Cruz’s hometown of Hagonoy also suffered from floods which damaged his family’s properties. “Dela Cruz travelled home to offer assistance, and there he began conversations with the governor of Bulacan,” Loving wrote.
“Dela Cruz, an eight-year SCE employee who specializes in dam safety for the Hydro Division of the Power Production Department, observed that the Bulacan province, and indeed the entire country, was ill-prepared to deal with the consequences of future floods.
The danger he saw was not just from typhoons but from the country’s aging dams,“ Loving furthered. “Failure of any one of the largest dams “could become a national disaster,” Dela Cruz said in the article.
The article further said, “for example, one of them, Angat Dam built in 1967, needs $120 million in retrofi ts.
Were it to fail, the deluge could affect more than 100,000 people who live downstream. The Angat Dam also supplies electricity and 97 percent of the drinking water for Metro Manila.” Loving also wrote that Dela Cruz realized that his home country had few if any dam safety or flood mitigation regulations.
Thus, the engineer who returned to the country through the Balik-Scientist Program of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) began a public awareness campaign, and was invited in 2012 to act as a technical adviser in dam safety engineering for the Philippines government.
“Using his vacation time, he has travelled extensively across the country, making presentations and advocating dam safety legislation. A bill to improve dam safety and flood mitigation is currently before the Philippines national legislature.” Loving said..
Dela Cruz credits SCE for launching him into this career path. “I had no experience with dams and dam safety when I started at Edison as a civil engineer,” he said. “SCE opened a lot of opportunities for me to expand my skills.”
Now, after seven years with the dam safety team at SCE, Dela Cruz is using those skills to watch out for the well-being of thousands of people on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.
As a result of his efforts over the last four years to improve flood preparedness in the Philippines, Dela Cruz was recently given the Gawad Dangal ng Lipi Award, the highest recognition given by the government of his home province of Bulacan.
