CANDABA, Pampanga – Flooding in 15 barangays in this town, now on its 14th day since typhoon Pedring, is ebbing at the rate of an inch per day and Mayor Jerry Pelayo is worried that at this pace, the floods would remain for as long as three months.
This amid past scientific studies indicating another apparently overlooked problem causing stagnant floods: the sinking grounds in the flooded towns.
“Our estimate is that our flooding on the average is about 90 inches, so that if the floods ebb by only one inch per day, we would remain flooded for the next three months,” Pelayo said in an interview, noting that in the past, flooding in Candaba lasted six days at most.
Also still flooded as of yesterday were the towns of Macabebe, Masantol, San Luis, San Simon, Apalit, Minalin and Sto. Tomas.
Pampanga Gov. Lilia Pineda and other local officials have blamed the silted Pampanga river towards the Manila Bay for the slow recession of floodwaters, and in Congress, Quezon City Rep. Danilo Suarez urged House probe into the Aquino administration’s alleged cancellation of projects at the Pampanga river.
But past scientific studies indicated yet another problem which might have been overlooked anti-flooding Pampanga Delta Development Project (PDDP): the subsidence or the sinking of ground in the PDDP area arising from too much extraction of underground water.
In their paper entitled “Relative Sea Level Changes and Worsening Floods in the Western Pampanga Delta:
Causes and Some Possible Mitigation Measures”, geologist Drs. Rodolfo and Fernando Siringan of the University of the Philippines (UP) pointed out that “natural phenomenon of land subsidence and the effects of high tide on local river which gradually worsens the flood and sea water incursion would render the PDDP useless.” Results of their study were presented in a journal entitled, “Disasters” in March 2006.
In another case study presented in a forum at the UP, Dr. Floro Quibuyen, in his paper entitled, “The Pampanga Delta Development Project, Lessons from a White Elephant”, argued that “the project is a colossal waste of money because the project managers remain unknowledgeable about the main causes of the problem.
It was said that land subsidence is the main cause of flooding in the project area and that creating dikes could only mitigate the problem in short term.”
Phase 1 of the PDDP, costing over P2 billion, included the dredging of the river with 160 meters width and 14.2 kilometers in length. The total dredging volume was equivalent to 12.2 million cubic meters.
After expanding the river size, dikes were constructed on the left and the right side of the river at 10 meters in width which could be used as road for light vehicles.
The length of the dikes stretched to 13.7kilometers on the left side of river and 14.2kilometers on the right side.
The width between the left and the right dikes was 750 meters. Several intercepting canals were constructed at three meters width along the embankment dike for irrigation and fishery purposes while there were 29 units of checkgates across the river.
These are apart from the 19 projects which Suarez claimed to have been stopped by the Aquino government.
The total cost of the projects was P934.1 million, and were part of the 139 projects or 42 contract packages funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) loan for the urgent rehabilitation of flood control facilities costing P1.9 billion, Suarez said.
Malacanang denies the allegations.
Meanwhile, despite the slow recession of floodwaters, hundreds of families who fled to the Arayat-Apalit s levee started to return to their houses located along the Arnedo Dike of the Pampanga River.
The Pampanga Electric Cooperative has also started to restore power in the typhoon-affected areas, the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (PDRRMC) reported yesterday.
PDRRMC said Pedring affected a total of 99,950 families or 458,058 individuals in Pampanga, mostly those living near the Pampanga river.
It came out yesterday with an updated estimate of agricultural damage worth P1.33 billion. Rice was the most affected crop, with losses worth P1.28 billion covering around 29,080 hectares of rice farms and affecting 18,350 farmers.
The PDRRMC also reported that high value commercial crops damage was estimated at P12 million with 210 hectares of vegetable crops and 440 farmers affected. For corn, an estimated damage of P114,367 was also reported.
To date, damaged bridges, dikes and other infrastructures were estimated at P150 million, including damages to the Gugu bridge in Bacolor; Arnedo Dike from Arayat to Apalit; Caulaman River and portion of Gumain River in Floridablanca; Matubig Creek in Sta. Ana and the tail dike in Minalin.
