Candating template persisting: Arayat truly makes the face of failed control projects

WAY PAST habagat and under the sweltering heat of the October sun, sections of two flood control structures in Arayat collapsed over the weekend, raising anew the spectre of the forever collapsing Candating flood control system in the mind of the terrified folk.

Mid-September’s torrential rains and the raging waters of the Pampanga River battering the flood control project in Barangay San Mateo are said to have caused erosion of the embankment and the partial collapse of its sheet piles on a rainless, floodless, dry and humid Oct. 2.

Arayat Mayor Jeffrey Luriz promptly calling the Department of Public Works and Highways for urgent action as no less than 20 houses were in danger of collapse too if no immediate intervention is implemented.

The following as-dry and sunny day, a section of the flood control system in Barangay Lacquios caved in with its sheet piles tilted riverway.

The skewed sheet piles unraveling; the story of Candating there rehappening. Recapped, thus:

Collapsed in August 2024, its rehabilitation far from completed when inundated – at the point of complete collapse – by the monsoons in July-August 2025.

Named by Sen. Ping Lacson as the “face of failed flood control projects” immediately before the Senate investigations.

Jointly investigated in September 2025 by the Independent Commission for Infrastructure and Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon, who did not contain his anger over “the patently substandard” construction and extracted from the project contractor, Edgardo Sagum, proprietor of Eddmari Construction and Trading Corp., the vow to repair the damage soonest and ablest –

Only to collapse again on Jan. 23, 2026, damaging at least 16 homes and endangering more along the downstream of Pampanga River.

Indeed, those sheet piles:

“Dapat naman (bunutin ang sheet piles), gusto nating malaman kung talagang 36 meters. That’s practically 10-storey building,” Dizon, at Candating September last year, in an early show of his now- patented “init-ulo” mode berating Sagum. “Dalawa lang ang problema…either may problema sa paggawa mo or yung design mali. Ganun lang ‘yun. So aalamin natin yan. Kailangan ito ipa-assess yung design nito kung tama ba o hindi.”

No, the sheet piles were never pulled out. After some media-covered perfunctory extraction tries, Eddmari Construction – sans any reported design re-assessment – just went on with its way of “repairing” the damage to “completion ahead” of its promised last-week-of-November-2025.

And that was that. Eddmari going off media radar; Dizon’s thermal temper channeled to myriad infra failures across the archipelago.

Still, impacted in its very image, the “face of failed flood control projects” – no thanks to Lacson, the senator – Eddmari Construction shall bear to its eternal shame.

To be fair, the damaged flood-mitigating projects at issue have different contractors: a Royal Crown Monarch Construction in Laquios, according to the barangay folk; Sto. Cristo Construction & Trading in San Mateo, if we go by the informational tarpaulin of the DPWH at the site.

Sto. Cristo Construction. At once, alarm bells ring; red flags, instantaneously rising.

Per https://sumbongsapangulo.ph/, Sto. Cristo Construction & Trading is the top contractor of flood control projects in Pampanga with a total of P1.713 billion. But a miniscule is the Arayat-Phase 2 San Mateo project at P91.095 million.

In Candaba alone, Sto Cristo Construction wangled P1.157 billion for projects at the Malasik River, and another P341.678 million for Maasim River.

Only last month, former Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo and a legal counsel representing Candaba residents filed with the National Bureau of Investigation’s Organized and Transnational Crimes Division a formal complaint over alleged irregular spending and substandard construction works tied to Sto. Cristo Construction & Trading and Globalcrete Builders, Inc. in alleged collusion with Candaba Mayor Rene Maglanque and former officers of the DPWH.

With the damaged embankment in Laquios, especially in San Mateo, connecting the dots may show an even bigger face of failed flood control projects beyond Arayat.