DPWH asked to replace dikes with new format
TO PROTECT DAGUPAN FROM FLOODING
DAGUPAN City Councilor Jose Netu Tamayo asked the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to replace and reformat its plans for dikes since most of the existing dikes in Dagupan are of the Gabion-type and which are lower in elevation than the level of flood water from the Pantal River that the city tries to contain.
In a manifestation during the last session of the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) on Oct. 22, Tamayo said he will file a resolution-complaint addressed to the DPWH to express his personal indignation over the sad state of the existing dikes built by the agency that did not at all protect the people of Dagupan from the floods.
He said he went around during and after the floods and noticed that the existing dikes built by the DPWH were below the flood line which indicates that these offered no resistance to the floodwater from upstream during the last monsoon rains and typhoon.
The dikes, he said, were of the Gabion-type of embankment, consisting merely of boulders put together by cement and enclosed by a cyclone wire.
“We went around during the flood and saw for ourselves that the flood is higher than the dikes especially in Barangay Lasip Grande, Pogo Grande, Lasip Chico, Pogo Chico and Perez Boulevard,” Tamayo said.
The Gabion-type of embankment, he said, allows the water from the river to seep through openings in-between boulders, making the dikes virtually useless.
Tamayo wants to remind DPWH that the purpose of building dikes is to contain the water from the river.
The councilor blamed the extreme flooding that hit the city from July to August this year on the defective dikes.
He said there is a need for the city government to ask the DPWH to redesign its plans so that bigger and stronger dikes other than the Gabion-type of dikes be built in Dagupan.
Under the law, it is the DPWH that plans, implements and funds national dikes to protect the people against flooding coming from the uplands, he said.
It’s time that Dagupan residents are made aware that the dikes have to be replaced with another type in order that flooding in the city can be minimized,” Tamayo intoned. (Leonardo Micua)
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