THE question is not “Nasaan ang Pangulo?” (Where is the President?) as the remaining adherents of former president Noynoy Aquino want the administration of his successor, Rodrigo Duterte, to answer in light of the recent heavy monsoon rains. The proper query is, what happened to the P18.7-billion Laguna Lake dredging project that would have solved the problem of flooding in eastern Metro Manila and other areas, had it been implemented as scheduled?
The answer, of course, is that Aquino scrapped the Laguna Lake Rehabilitation Project in 2011, after dismissing it as the mere moving of mud from one area of the lake, which caused the massive floods in lakeshore areas in the south and southeastern portions of the metropolis and Rizal and Laguna provinces during Typhoon Ondoy in 2009, will continue to wreak havoc unless the inland freshwater body of water is dredged and deepened.
By the way, the unilateral scrapping of the contract of Belgian contractor Baggerwerken Decloedt En Zoon (BDC) led to the award of P800 million to the dredging company by the International Center for the Settlement of International Disputes (ICSID) in January 2017. That means we, the taxpayers, have to pay for Aquino’s scrapping of the LLRP without receiving the benefits of better flood control, had the lake been made deeper to accept rainwater draining into it from Metro Manila.
And up to now, no one save perhaps for Aquino himself knows why the dredging contract was cancelled. All we know is that two justice secretaries, Alberto Agra, who was appointed by Aquino’s predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Leila de Lima, whom Noynoy appointed to replace Agra, had both found BDC’s contract legal and binding on the government.
We also know that King Albert of Belgium, which lent money for the project through a concessional Official Development Assistance scheme, pleaded with Aquino to continue the project, to no avail, before BDC went to ICSID for arbitration and damages. And we know, as well, that Aquino ally Sen. Franklin Drilon led the propaganda campaign against the 150-year-old BDC, which has an excellent track record of implementing dredging projects in the Low Countries of Europe, describing the LLRP contract as “graft-ridden.”
According to reports at the time, neither Aquino nor Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima could give the Belgian king or the financial institutions which funded the project, clear and compelling reasons for scrapping the dredging contract. By the time Aquino rejected the LLRP, it was already well under way, with BDC spending close to P400 million to undertake studies on the lake, including its water quality, its geology and geomorphology, the species still existing in the lake, and the social and economic impact of the dredging; the Department of Environment and Natural Resources had also already granted the contractor all the necessary permits and clearances.
But more than just increasing the capacity of the 94,900-hectare lake over a period of nine years to allow it to receive more floodwaters, the BDC’s LLRP project also intended to deepen the body of water to improve the quality of its water for “harvesting.” The lake, which has a 2.5-meter average depth, could not be used as a source of potable water for purification for Metro Manila because it failed to reach the minimum world standard depth of 2.8 meters due to siltation, despite the 100 rivers, streams and other sources that dump freshwater from the Sierra Madre mountain range and the provinces of Quezon, Rizal, Cavite and Laguna.
So, the scrapping of the BDC project did not only adversely impact the long-term flood control program of the government. It also deprived the metropolis of a lasting solution to the lack of potable water for purification, all because Aquino decided that it was a simple mud-moving exercise.
This week, of course, Laguna Lake is once again in the news, after authorities declared that the body of water has reached its maximum capacity two months earlier than predicted. Hydrologists of the Laguna Lake Development Authority announced that the lake was already full and that if another major rain-producing event like a tropical storm or more monsoon rains (habagat) hit the country, overflowing would result.
The LLDA said that the floods in lakeshore areas as a result of Ondoy in 2009 were the direct result of the overflowing of the lake, the country’s biggest inland body of water. Officials are now closely monitoring the overflowing of the lake, especially in the Rizal town of Binangonan, where residents have already noticed rapidly rising levels of water.
According to LLDA, the lake reached its maximum elevation of 12.5 meters last Monday, compared to 14 meters during Ondoy. The lake’s maximum capacity of 2.2 billion cubic meters of water has also been reached this week, it said.
Floods spawned by Ondoy submerged many lakeshore areas of Metro Manila in the cities of Taguig and Parañaque and as far as Pasig, Marikina and Quezon City, as well as wide swaths of the provinces of Laguna and Rizal after the lake overflowed. With the rainy season still upon us, there is no telling if a backed-up lake will not once again cause Ondoy-like flooding in these same places.
And to this day, when we are still paying for Aquino’s inexplicable cancellation of the LLRP project without getting any relief from flooding or even receiving the promise of more potable water for our homes, we really have to ask the question: What was Noynoy thinking?
Aquino was lucky that no Ondoy-like flooding occurred during his term. But with the specter of a similar catastrophe occurring because of the current heavy rains, Noynoy and his administration must be made to answer for scrapping this vital project.
So, instead of asking where Duterte — an action-oriented local executive who is always there when his constituents need him — has been and what he’s doing, perhaps we should really ask: Why hasn’t Aquino been haled to court yet or thrown in jail for endangering us and making us pay for it in the bargain?
https://www.manilatimes.net/what-was-noynoy-thinking/430584/
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