Of floods, greed, and corruption

Mother Earth is on a rampage of punishment. For at least three weeks now, our country has been experiencing its wrath. School, work, business, and travel have been immensely disrupted. Agricultural crops have been horrendously destroyed. Roads, public infrastructure, business establishments, and residential houses have suffered incalculable damage. Families have been distressed by deaths and injuries.

Mother Earth has brought all this havoc by sending a succession or combination of extreme heat, drought, typhoons, low-pressure areas (LPAs), and severe iterations of the southwest monsoon, also known as habagat. While these “natural” weather disturbances occur every year, they have become unnaturally more frequent, more extreme, and more destructive. They have become abnormal versions of what used to be normal weather events.

In the not-so-distant past, we only hyperventilated when we learned of the strong wind signal strength of any incoming storm, because that was the exclusive indication then of how potentially destructive an approaching typhoon was. For the past few years, however, it is no longer wind-strong storms that have been causing mayhem in our lives. Mere LPAs and southwest monsoon occurrences have been more problematic to us because they’ve been bringing tremendous volumes of rain that cause severe flooding in our communities.

It’s about time that our weather bureau calibrated its public advisories by including in its warnings the expected volume of water, the time period for the heaviest downpour, and the areas where flooding will likely occur.

We are suffering from floodwaters because of the flood of greed that thrives in our midst. We’ve turned a blind eye to the destruction of large swaths of our forest caused by mining companies, quarry operators, illegal loggers, kaingin farmers, and illegal settlers. Yes, we’ve been lectured on this issue like a broken record, but we deserve a daily flogging of blame until we finally do something that shows we’ve finally learned our lesson. We’ve allowed our urban communities to become concrete jungles deprived of open parks, which function as sponges that absorb floodwaters. We’ve tolerated the destruction of our mangroves, which act as natural barriers against typhoons and storm surges.

One man-made environmental fiasco stands out and deserves to be called out. This is the ongoing construction of the New Manila International Airport (NMIA) in the floodplains of Bulacan province. Cyberspace is replete with residents complaining of the unprecedented levels of flooding in their towns, not only in Bulacan but even in Pampanga. Some residents admit that there had always been problems with flooding in some of the municipalities, but not the kind of severe, deep, and long-standing flooding that has been happening now in their communities. They point to the massive land development and reclamation being done for the NMIA as the culprit. They complain, and environmental groups confirm that the resulting reclaimed wetlands and altered waterways have been trapping monsoon and high-tide waters on land longer than before. Residents post pictures of floodwaters submerging their houses and turning their communities into tragic water worlds. To imagine that this is the new reality for the affected residents for the next 50 years as stipulated in NMIA’s concession agreement is heartbreaking.

The government had a previous plan to turn the Clark airport in Pampanga into a major air hub that would either supplement or altogether replace the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The plan even included a speed train that would connect Metro Manila and Clark—making it fast, easy, and convenient for travelers to commute to the airport—in the same way that the major airports in Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, and other Asian cities have done. As to why the government ditched this ideal airport solution in favor of the NMIA project—which has entailed destruction of mangroves, fishing grounds, unique ecosystems, and natural waterways—is beyond reason and logic.

And then there’s the flood of corruption that has enraged the whole country. From as early as 2016 up to 2025, more than a trillion pesos of people’s money has been wasted on “ghost” and substandard flood control projects. Sizable chunks of people’s funds ended up in the pockets of soulless politicians. The funds were promoted as necessary for projects that will mitigate Mother Nature’s wrath, only to end up engendering the people’s wrath.

We are a people sinking in a triple whammy of floods—of water, greed, and corruption. If we continue to elect the same leaders who have brought us to this quagmire, we deserve to fall into the precipice of doom that’s right in front of us.

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