CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The vast Candaba Swamp traversing the provinces of Pampanga and Bulacan provides the best solution to floodings in the area.
“The Candaba Swamp is a catch basin of the waters from the upper regions of northeastern Luzon. That natural state can be enhanced with the swamp transformed into a lake that shall contain and store floodwaters,” Butil-Farmers Partylist Rep. Agapito H. Guanlao said in an interview with Punto! yesterday.
“The stored water can be used for irrigation during the hot season or even tapped for potable water supply,” he added, seeing increased farm productivity and added commercial value as directly obtaining from the swamp.
Aside from the fishing industry that also “will abound,” once the swamp is made into a lake, Guanlao sees it as a “nautical highway” connecting Nueva Ecija-Bulacan in the east to Pampanga-Bataan in the west.
“Water transport makes another alternative to land travel in and around Central Luzon provinces,” Guanlao said.
“Thereby increasing regional trade and commerce.”
Guanlao however recognized the “steep sacrifice” certain local government units “have to pay” to realize a “Candaba Lake.”
“Large chunks of Macabebe and Masantol in Pampanga, Calumpit and Hagonoy in Bulacan, have to be made a part of the lake’s outlet to Manila Bay,” Guanlao said.
“In the long run though, I think it would be a sacrifice well worth it, in terms of the benefits and savings we shall all derive from the absence of the annual destructive floods that cost us billions and billions in damages and opportunities lost,” he said.
The idea of turning the Candaba Swamp into a lake, Guanlao said, is “nothing new, as it has come up in a study of the Japan International Cooperation Agency on the Pampanga Delta Project.”
Some local government units in Pampanga have pointed to the Phase 3 of the Pampanga Delta Project as the “long term solution” to the floodings they experience, which “sadly has remained unimplemented.”
Guanlao lamented that the funds for the project were allegedly “diverted to the (Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway) project.”
The solon also rued the stoppage by the Aquino administration of the desilting and dredging projects in Central Luzon programmed by the previous administration.
“There is no politics in desilting and dredging. There is only devastation and billion-peso losses in their non-implementation,” he said as he urged the national government to “make up for loss time” by “fast tracking” all “flood-mitigating interventions.”
