Why not a catch-basin for all?

By Al S. Mendoza

 

AGAIN, the rains came.

Again, the floods came.

Again, the evacuations came.

Again, the donations came.

Again, the blame-game came.

The rains come because our country has two major seasons:  rainy and sunny, or wet and dry, or warm and hot.

Floods come because garbage-clogged waterways divert the rains into valleys and plains.

Floods materialize because water from dams are released, sometimes in wild abandon.

Evacuations happen to save our poor folk living haplessly by the banks of dying, if not yet dead, rivers that rage and swell by the pounding of unceasing rains.

Donations pour in because, mainly, it is also time for the rich to show that, yes, they do care for their poor brethren.  (Dear Rene So always takes lead in this aspect.)

Everybody has a good and bad side, you know.  Ask Benjie Lim (but where is he, really?).

The blame-game comes both ways.

One, the poor insist on squatting on lands they don’t own, mostly by the river banks, esteros and even landslide-prone hills and valleys, not to mention idle lands both owned privately and by the government.

We blame them because they are the chief architects in impeding the flow of rains into waterways monstrously blocked by their refuse, if not their shanties illegally constructed that constrict the natural path of nature.

Rain is nature, have you forgotten?

You can’t fight nature.

You may not even control it.

You may temper its wrath, but you can never manhandle its course.

Two, authorities/officials are the best defenders, justifiers, of a nature’s devastation, destruction.

Instead of implementing solutions, authorities/officials are usually the first to turn in both a blind eye and a deaf ear.

“We need to evacuate those in danger of being swept away by the floods,” many of them love to say.

They never say, “We will put a stop to the floods so that we don’t need to evacuate our folk again in the future.”

I am glad P-Noy has said his administration is close to buying 50 hectares in Cavite for use to build a catch-basin.

He said in two years time, the catch-basin is ready to arrest the floods spilling out of swollen rivers.

Not to brag, but I’ve been saying here all along that a catch-basin is one of the best answers to the nation’s flooding.

And, to deviate a bit, every dam in the country should have a catch-basin beside it, which can store dam-water released every time there’s an oversupply of rains.

Said water in the catch-basin can be used for irrigation during summer, when rains are scarce.  Firefighters can also make use of them.  Already, The Fort in Global City Taguig has one.

And since we are at this, may I repeat my thesis:  Why not allocate a catch-basin each for every town, if not every barangay in flood-prone municipalities, in the country?

That way, we prevent good, precious water from being thrown away each time the rains come, especially unwanted waters from swollen dams that can actually be stored into catch-basins for the summer months.

Yes, the construction of a catch-basin will cost us but then, quality, and long-lasting solutions, is expensive – as always.

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