Officials Unveil Map Showing Forty-Three Priority Flood Zones, Twenty-Seven of Which Have Been Priority Flood Zones in Every Flood Control Plan Issued Since 1987

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

MANILA, PHILIPPINES — The Department of Public Works and Highways unveiled Thursday a new P80 billion flood control masterplan covering Metro Manila, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal, describing the programme as “the most comprehensive, science-based, integrated flood mitigation initiative in Philippine history” and confirming that implementation would begin “immediately, pending procurement, environmental clearance, right-of-way acquisition, contractor bidding, budget release, and the formation of an inter-agency coordination committee to oversee the formation of a technical working group.” Officials said the programme would meaningfully reduce Metro Manila’s flood vulnerability within five to seven years, a timeline that flood-affected communities described as “within the spirit of Philippine infrastructure planning” and that flood engineering experts said depended heavily on the definition of “begin immediately.”

The Forty-Three Priority Flood Zones: A Familiar Map

The masterplan identifies forty-three priority flood zones across the four provinces, colour-coded by severity and annotated with engineering assessments, hydrological data, and proposed interventions ranging from creek rehabilitation to pumping station construction to what the document calls “strategic catchment management,” a phrase DPWH officials confirmed referred to the installation of large drains in areas where large drains have been proposed in every flood control plan issued since the Ramos administration. Twenty-seven of the forty-three priority zones appeared in the 1987 Metro Manila Flood Control Masterplan, the 1994 plan, the 2003 plan, the 2012 plan, and the 2019 plan, a consistency that officials said demonstrated “continuity of evidence-based priority setting” and that disaster risk researchers described as “twenty-seven very patient flood zones.”

The appearance of repeat entries was raised by a reporter at the press conference, who asked why flood zones identified as priorities in 1987 had not been addressed in thirty-nine years of subsequent plans. DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan said the question was “fair” and attributed the pattern to a combination of right-of-way challenges, budget release timing, contractor performance issues, and what he described as “the complexity of working in a densely urbanised environment where every flood control project affects communities, livelihoods, and structures that also need to be managed.” He said the new plan had a dedicated right-of-way acquisition team, a ring-fenced budget, and a quarterly implementation monitoring committee, all of which previous plans had also had, he acknowledged, before saying that this time the committee would have a Gantt chart.

Marikina River and the Perennial Question of Where the Water Goes

The plan gives particular attention to the Marikina River basin, which drains a catchment of approximately 530 square kilometres and which floods with what hydrologists describe as “impressive regularity” during typhoon events, inundating communities in Marikina, Pasig, and downstream areas with water that engineers say could be managed with sufficient investment in upstream retention, channel clearing, and pumping capacity, and that continues to flood communities because sufficient investment in those measures has not yet been fully implemented, a gap that the new plan proposes to address using the same categories of investment that previous plans also proposed.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, which provides weather forecasting and climate data for the Philippines, noted in its most recent climate risk assessment that Metro Manila’s flood vulnerability is expected to increase under projected climate change scenarios due to more intense rainfall events, sea level rise affecting drainage in low-lying coastal areas, and continued urbanisation that reduces permeable surface area. PAGASA’s assessment recommended urgent investment in grey and green infrastructure, noting that the window for cost-effective intervention narrows as climate impacts intensify. The DPWH said it was “taking PAGASA’s findings into account” in the masterplan, a statement that flood engineers said was encouraging and that PAGASA said it would believe when the procurement notices were issued.

The World Bank, which has co-financed flood risk management projects in the Philippines, confirmed it was reviewing the new masterplan for potential future partnership and noted that the Philippines’ history of flood control planning demonstrated both the scale of the challenge and what it called “a sustained institutional commitment to addressing it,” which is development finance language that experienced journalists translate as “they keep trying, which is something.”

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The Gantt chart is ready. The Onion is also in a priority flood zone.

Community Voices: What Flood-Affected Families Say Every Time a New Plan Is Announced

In Marikina, where flooding during typhoon events has displaced thousands of families repeatedly over multiple decades, reaction to the new P80 billion flood control masterplan was characterised by what community leader Nena Reyes, 58, described as “a very specific kind of exhausted hope that we have developed after many plans.” Reyes has lived in Marikina for thirty years, survived seven major flood events that entered her home, and participated in consultations for the 2003 flood control plan, the 2012 plan, and the 2019 plan. She said each consultation produced the same conclusions, each plan produced the same map, and each map produced the same promises, and that her community had developed an informal taxonomy of government flood promises ranging from “imminent” (meaning within two to three years) to “prioritised” (meaning within five to seven years) to “identified” (meaning on a map somewhere). She said the new plan’s language placed most of the Marikina interventions in the “prioritised” category. She said she would believe them when the pumping stations were running. She said she had kept all the previous consultation documents and could provide them to researchers who were interested. She said she had offered them to three previous administrations and they had each thanked her politely. She said she was still offering.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/manila-flood-control-80-billion-plan/