Very early on Wednesday, 18 July, while enroute from Dasmariñas City to my office in Makati, I was mentally debating what specific topic I would address for this issue of the Review. Three major issues our Advocates for National Interests (ANI) group would like to delve on initially are: (1) the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), (2) the West Philippine Sea and China, and; (3) Criminality and Judicial Reform.
Constitutional Change is another issue, but that is somehow connected to the BBL case, since both President Rodrigo Duterte and his Constitutional Commission Chair Reynato Puno both consider Federalism as the solution to the Islamic rebellion issue. The irony is that now, both the BBL and Charter Change seem to be top priorities for the Administration. The bicameral hearing early this week brought out many flaws from various perspectives, so it will mostly have a rough sailing, I think.
By the way, these three issues were all mentioned during the launching of the ANI at a press conference conducted on Wednesday, 10 July at the Club Filipino at Greenhills, Mandaluyong City, which was incidentally one day before the second year anniversary of the favorable decision of the Arbitral Court to grant us our sovereign rights to our 200-mile EEZ on the South China Sea.
I had picked the BBL two days before as my topic, and had started on a critical note that would certainly displease its backers. Then I reached the Imus–Bacoor boundary on Aguinaldo Highway, and saw that it was the worse flood I have seen for the highway ever since I moved to Cavite in 1997. I slogged through it, and while doing so received various Viber and text messages showing flooding at EDSA, Manila, CAMANAVA, Quezon City, etc., and the Marikina River was showing shades of the Ondoy flooding. But I got through to my office, only to find out work was cancelled and guess who did not get the word?
That was when, being all alone, I got mentally active, and prepared a Viber text to Maritime League Trustee Ding Wenceslao, the Chairman of ASEANA:
Ding: How about big players buying that 1 km swath of land from Laguna Lake to Baclaran centered around the longtime planned but abandoned LLDA-DPWH proposal for a drainage canal? When I convened an RTD at NDCP after Ondoy, this was presented but both LLDA and DPWH said it was “too expensive now.” But the plan was only for a canal and did not include other development.
My fascination with Laguna Lake came as early as 1969-70 when as PN NAVWEPS, I was designated as alternate to Capt Jaime Francisco (PN N-3) as PN representative to the National Committee on Marine Sciences (NCMS), and once was tasked to verify the reported oversilting of Laguna Lake. This I did with a team from the Small Craft Unit at Cavite on a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), and found that the soundings on the BCGS Chart of Laguna Lake were quite accurate and silting was mostly around Pateros town and the Pasig River itself. But I did note the potential of Laguna Lake for tourism, food production and waterfront development, having seen the Great Lakes, Lake Tahoe and read the brochures on SOCAL’s Lake Havasu (which later collapsed due to salination as a result of reduced fresh water input from the Colorado River that did not exceed the evaporation of water from the lake).
The overflowing of Laguna Lake was discussed in a forum organized by the Crisis Management Institute (CMI) of the National Defense College (NDCP), in partnership with the NDCP Education and Development Foundation (NDCP-EDFI) on 3-Dec-2009 at the NDCP at Camp Aguinaldo, QC. The forum aimed at looking into the current state of Laguna Lake to determine the reason and extent of the rise of its water level that caused massive flooding during Tropical Storm “Ondoy” for the purpose of formulating steps to address the problem of clogged waterways and flooding in the communities along the shore of the lake. It also aimed at discussing current urban planning and development activities in Metro Manila, and examine some flaws in its implementation.
The speakers and reactor during the workshop were Architect Felino Palafox Jr., Principal Architect, Urban Planner, Founder and Managing Partner of Palafox and Associates; Ms. Dolora Nepomuceno, Assistant General Manager, Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) and Professor Alex Ramon Cabanilla of the School of Urban and Regional Planning (SURP) at the U.P. and participants included representatives of the Governors of Rizal and Laguna, the Mayors of Taytay, San Mateo, Biňan, Sta Rosa, Marikina, Taguig and Pasig; and the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA); the MMDA, DENR, the Office of Civil Defense, the NDCC, the DOH, the DILG, the DECS, DPWH, AFP, NIA, UP and the NWRB. The Philippine Institute of Environmental Planners also sent a representative.
That forum was covered in the Chairman’s Page of the Maritime Review MR 10-1 (Jan-Feb 2010) issue. Ms. Nepomuceno gave a factual account on Flooding in the Laguna de Bay Region; Architect Palafox, discussed Metro Manila Transport, Land Use and Development Planning, and Professor Cabanilla of UP discussed his views relative to the issues at hand.
The Construction of that proposed Laguna Lake Paranaque spillway was strongly recommended by all. But how do we implement this when DPWH opined that the cost of acquiring the land now would make the project prohibitive? The answer is PPP – Public-Private Partnership, so I quote the second part of my message to Ding Wenceslao:
Let’s look at this: The canal could be a 300-meter canal with a tree-lined parkway on both sides and rows of very high-end townhomes, designed for sale and distribution as compensation to the displaced property owners. I suggest you task your people in ASEANA to do the math and let’s sit down. We can get ALI, SUDECO, SMDC and other players, if necessary. This is for national development and security. We can make it navigable by widening it, if feasible. Your group”s infra development ingenuity, PRRD’s political will, and Buildx3 program can make this work.
If this were China, all government has to do is provide the funds and just do it. Rich democratic countries just buy off the property owners; I lived in Fairfax County in Northern Virginia in the 80’s. A few years later on a visit, I met a Filipino doctor who said with a big smile that his property was hit by the new Fairfax Country Parkway project running through the Springfield area, and he was happy. He got to upgrade to a better house.
With some effort, support from the government and ingenuous master-planning, our top developers can do this. I can think of two approaches:
- Government initiative: Get government approval to implement the project. Under the strong-willed Duterte administration, just the nod of the President can cause all the government agencies to come together:
- Agency tasked prepares Terms of Reference for the Project, for government approval. The TOR could ask consortiums of developers to offer to do the job (this was how BCDA did it, in a different way);
- Bid out; and
- Execute.
- Unsolicited offers, subject to Swiss challenge (the new normal)
The development aspects related to this are as unlimited as the imagination that the players can provide. I have seen proposals for the Laguna Lake from Green Square Properties that includes damming the northern lobe as a future fresh water source, reclamation ideas, responses from the LLDA reclamation plan, and a lake connector highway idea from Hong Kong’s Sir Gordon Wu, etc.
But the only one that can greatly help solve the perennial over flowing of the Laguna Lake, and flooding of Metro Manila is the century-old idea of a Paranaque spillway that can, additionally, provide added urban development for the area.