of typhoons and dams 2

Archive the monster dams

By Marlen V. Ronquillo, Manila Times 30 Sept 09

What is the global mantra nowadays? It is something like this: Always turn a crisis into an opportunity. Or, do not let a crisis go to waste.

How do we turn Ondoy’s wreckage into opportunity? From the surface, this is quite hard to even think of right now, given the magnitude of the death and destruction brought about by Ondoy’s record-high rainfall. Even those mildly suffering are still stunned over our own version of Katrina: instant death, submerged towns and cities, desperate cries for help of the dying, the inadequacy of the rescue efforts.

You have a mental account of what took place in places like Bocaue and Cainta. People lazing around on a Saturday morning (some sipping coffee, some still bundled in bed.) Suddenly, the water rises. One hour later, they are trapped in a watery inferno. Some make it to the rooftop. Others fail to make it.

The stiff, ice-cold and graying bodies of infants that littered the low-lying towns of Metro Manila, Rizal and Central Luzon cannot find any form of justification. They had glimpsed life—only to be cut short in a cruel, instant death.

But like in all aftermaths, the survivors have to take up the tools and go on with their lives. Grief is always transitory. I know. I lost everything to the Pinatubo eruption. The day after the Big Bang I had nothing except the shirt on my back—and anguish. The investment of a lifetime, an integrated farm just 30 kilometers off the volcano’s crater, was doomed by hot sand. Two weeks after, however, you start shifting through the wreckage to build anew.

Life’s unfailing narrative is rebuilding from tragedies.

The first priority is a concern of public policy—the system that has favored the construction of costly, multi-purpose dams. The giant dam policy should be reviewed, then archived. It is a 19th century policy prescription and it is no longer relevant nowadays.

The giant dams, during times of excessive rainfall, have to let go of excess water to prevent the collapse of the holding structures. Every water release, though calibrated by the standards of dam managers, has a terrible impact on the low-lying communities along the rivers and tributaries that absorb the released water. Precisely, this was the case on Saturday. Quezon City’s traditionally safe areas were submerged neck-deep after the water releases from the dams.

The dams are rendered safe by the water releases. But the communities and the people that these dams are theoretically mandated to serve through potable water supply, power needs and irrigation water have been either maimed or killed by the water releases.

If the dams are dangerous during periods of excessive rainfall, they are also not performing up to par during the dry season.

If you pass by the giant Pantabangan dam during the dry season, you would see the spire of the old town church jutting out of the low-level water. Because the watershed areas that are supposed to replenish the dam’s water supply during the dry season are fast-vanishing, Pantabangan is barely-functioning during the peak of the dry season. During El Niños, it is in worse shape.

Magat dam, a giant, multi-purpose dam like Pantabangan, is likewise spooked by the same problem of denuded watershed areas. Like Pantabangan, the dry season always sees Magat suffer from FTP, or failure to perform.

All the giant dams such as Magat, Pantabangan and Ca-secnan had been funded by loans given government guarantees. They are costly, their huge cost made more terrible by the huge interest payments.

The interest payment from the loans used to fund the construction of the giant dams alone is enough to fill the classroom void, the textbook lack and the inadequacy of public school teachers.

Ok, what is the alternative to these costly dams often suffering from bouts of FTP?

Invest in research and development (R and D) to develop safe, less costly and more efficient technologies for irrigation. Then, give RE (renewable energy) a big push to lessen the dependence on the multi-purpose dams for power needs. This will remove all the reasons for building these costly and unsafe dams.

Countries across the globe are doing the same thing, reviewing their giant dam construction projects in favor of safer more efficient substitutes.

Archiving the dams is truly a 21st century imperative.

mvrong@yahoo.com

of typhoons and dams

sept 27 sunday, around two o’clock in the afternoon, dzmm teleradyo

tail end of a live presscon of gma and gibo and the national disaster coordinating council (ndcc) trying their darndest to appear like they have been and continue to be on top of the situation, doing the best that can be done given the unexpected unprecedented unbearable volume of rainfall that ondoy brought.

dost director graciano yumol was in the middle of a hardsell that typhoon ondoy was in many ways different from hurricane katrina.   among other things, he gave the impression that the ndcc was prepared for, having seen, that huge flood coming.    say niya, “…early in the afternoon we were already telling them to evacuate…”    at noong hurricane katrina daw, ang response time ng u.s. government was two days.   ang ndcc?    “first thing in the morning ndcc was on the scene.   that’s how quick ndcc responded…”

yeah, right.

3:45 p.m.  gibo was back for another presscon.   caught him saying that the news of ondoy coming was duly reported in the papers.   we were warned.   but of course daw there was no predicting so much rain pouring down steadily for hours on end.   on top of that, september has been a rainy month, 4 weather disturbances daw before ondoy, kaya saturated na ang lupa and could not absorb any more of the rainwater.

gibo should have gone on to talk about the dams, angat and ipo in bulacan, and la mesa in quezon city.   instead government has been avoiding the question and would have us believe that no water was released, the dams were not full from the same september rains.

flashback to 13 september 09

about angat dam in particular, but which could apply to ipo and la mesa dams as well in terms of how full of water they were:

Angat Dam nearing spill level

MALOLOS CITY, Philippines – Water elevation at the giant Angat Dam is about to reach its spilling level of 210 meters as rains continue in Central Luzon, and local officials fear that it might break if pressure mounts.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) yesterday afternoon raised public storm warning signal no. 1 in nine provinces in northern Luzon with the arrival of tropical depression “Nando.”

. . . Records from the Provincial Disaster Management Office (PDMO) obtained by The STAR showed that water elevation at the Angat Dam climbed to 209.65 meters as of 8 a.m. yesterday.

Officials said the steady rise of water elevation at the giant water reservoir that supplies 97 percent of Metro Manila’s water requirements is caused by constant rainfall over the past weeks.

On Sept. 1, PDMO records showed that water elevation was only 204.89 meters.

High water elevation at the dam means enough water for Metro Manila but the continued rains might breach the dam’s spilling level that would require the release of water to ease pressure on the dikes.

In the past, the National Power Corp. (Napocor) managing the Angat Dam watershed usually released water from the dam through the Angat River when water elevation breached its spilling level of 210 meters.

Bulacan officials have demanded that the rehabilitation of the aging Angat Dam be prioritized over the proposed multibillion-dollar construction of Laiban Dam in Rizal.

Without repair, they said the 41-year-old Angat Dam poses danger to millions of residents of Bulacan and neighboring provinces, citing documents from the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) that the dam is sitting on a geological fault line and has already developed cracks.

forward to september 14

about angat dam’s condition, more than 40 years after it was built and commissioned.

No Cracks in Angat Dam

MANILA – The Angat Dam management assured the public that the dam does not have any cracks, dispelling the feared disaster that could happen if the dam crumbles.

During a survey of the Angat Dam in Bulacan on Sunday, local officials and the dam’s management showed some media members that the dam is safe.

The survey of the area, which took almost one hour, did not see signs that there is danger in the area.

“Sabi ng MWSS [Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System]… normal na merong seepage… pero walang crack,” said Neri Amparo, regional director of the Office of Civil Defense-Region 3.

Authorities have also pointed at the seepage from which the water is released from the dam.

But the Angat Dam management maintained that the seepage is normal in dams that are made of earth and rockfill. They also believe that the dam will last long.

“Kaya pang tumagal nito ng 50 years, except kung magkaroon ng earthquake,” remarked Romualdo Beltran of the dam’s reservoir and management division, National Power Corp. (NPC).

Downplayed fears

On Saturday, the Sagip Sierra Madra Environmental Society expressed alarm that continuous rains could aggravate the reported seepage in the Angat Dam as a portion of the dam is located on the Marikina West Valley Fault Line.

The environmental group members feared the possibility of an earthquake that could cause the dam’s destruction and lead to a flashflood.

They noted that if the seepage expands, water will forcibly be released from the dam.

This could submerge 11 towns in water, namely Norzagaray, Angat, Bustos, San Rafael, Baliuag, Plaridel, Malolos, Calumpit, Paombong and Hagonoy in Bulacan, and Masantol in Pampanga.

In addition, the reported cracks in the dam pose a threat to the water supply in Metro Manila as 97 percent of its water supply comes from the dam.

The Angat Dam management, however, downplayed such fears.

NPC plant manager Rodolfo German said: “Matagal ng isyu yan… ginagawan nila ng dam remediation.”

“Nagkaroon ng 2 major earthquakes… wala kaming nakikitang signs na nag-deteriorate ang dam structure natin,” noted Jose Dorado, principal engineer from the MWSS.

Despite the continuous rains, the management said it is not yet time to release water from the dam because the water level is still safe. –

forward to sept 25 and ondoy

it rained all night and most of the next day.    all three dams must have been spilling water after all that rain.   by noon there may have been great fear that the structures (angat, at least) would give way under the immense pressure and release the water in one humongous wave.   infinitely safer to release the water little by little, sort of.   and so it happened.

The Bulacan Provincial Disaster Management Office (PDMO) reported the Angat dam commenced spilling operations at about 1 p.m. on Saturday with the initial opening of its radial gate, releasing one cubic meter of water every 30 minutes until total outflows reached 500 cubic meters per second.

The state media said reports from the Bulacan Provincial Disaster Management Office (PDMO) showed that hardest hit by the raging floods were the towns of Marilao, where waters rose to as high as 9 feet; Bustos, 7 feet, and Bocaue, 5 feet.

Gov. Joselito Mendoza of Bulacan said the flooding, the worst to hit the province since October 1978, was compounded by the release of water from the overflowing Angat dam and Ipo dam in Norzagaray town.

i have no idea, there are no similar reports, about how much later, or sooner, water was released from the ipo and the la mesa dams.   i suspect it all happened that saturday afternoon, around the time when the water started rising swiftly and inexorably,and reaching places never before touched by flood waters.

. . .  Valenzuela Rep. Magtangol “Magi” Gunigundo blamed the inefficient handling of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), local government units (LGUs) and officials of the La Mesa Dam for the worst flood that hit Metro Manila.

“The Metro Manila calamity was aggravated by poor coordination of MMDA, PAGASA, LGUs and La Mesa Dam authorities. No effective dissemination of information on rainfall, no warning by La Mesa Dam authorities on their decision to release impounded water. Delayed MMDA and LGUs response,” an irate Gunigundo said in an interview.

what were they thinking?    that all that additional water would drain directly out to the manila bay?   nakalimutan nila, o hindi nila alam, that rivers along the way are all silted up because of land erosion, thanks to deforestation, and esteros are all clogged up with nonbiodegradable plastic  trash, thanks to an mmda that’s apparently given up on the garbage problem?   no wonder kung saan-saan nakarating ang baha.

of course it’s quite possible that government officials just didn’t want to cause panic.   imagine the hysteria, and the horrendous traffic once people started evacuating.   but, hey, in such a crisis a good leader should have no trouble addressing the people, explaining the situation, allaying fears, offering advice, and mobilizing the media and the internet to assist and facilitate.

anc’s pia hontiveros is so right to ask, bakit walang warning?    maybe authorities were correct to release the water in controlled increments,  maybe it was the lesser evil.   but but but the public should have been seriously warned.   the people deserve to be given adequate information on matters that affect their lives so that they can make the right decisions, that is, whether to stay and brave the elements, in which case, walang sisihan!   or whether to go and seek higher ground while there’s time, with at least some possessions and their dignity intact.

meanwhile, let’s pray really hard that typhoon peping pepeng changes course.

TV RULES

Satur Sulit

Advertisements on television
directed at children
are eminently dangerous
underhanded and insidious

They trick children’s attentions
and arouse their desires
then whelm them with products
to want their parents to buy

Held captive by the designs
of self-promoters and profiteers
their little minds are kidnapped
for ransom in patronage

It is an unchecked subversion
of parents’ prerogatives
to define the parameters
of their children’s upbringing

Their options are pre-empted
they are helpless against
the subliminal effects of
a medium that is the message

The effects are immediate
the children are hypnotized
they cannot tell the difference
between virtual and real

And soon they are weaned
from the rule of their parents
their fancied lives but a mirage
of illusions for sale

the dacer whodunit

i had just typed in the title of this post and was making buwelo to share my thoughts on the lacson-estrada senate showdown in the context of the dacer-corbito murders nang nabulaga ako kay senador miriam defensor santiago looking good in a yellow suit (!) and in fighting form, taking on the u.s. of a. no less, president obama no less, and calling for the abrogation and renegotiation of the visiting forces agreement, yey, ang saya, it’s about time, mabuhay si miriam!   that was a good speech, covered all the bases, a must-read for every thinking filipino who truly wants change.   america is part of our problem.   america is the elephant, the gorilla, the dambuhala in the room that we don’t talk about.

it is even said that you have to be amboy (amgirl) to win the presidency of the philippines.   someone correct me if i’m wrong that estrada was the exception; he won even if america didn’t want him to win.   and now that he’s bent on running for president again, i wouldn’t be surprised if america is helping either the administration or the opposition, or both, to harass him into dropping out of the race.   which brings me back to the dacer case.

back in march, herman tiu laurel asked:

Why has the US opened the way for the return of Mancao and Dumlao at this time? Of course, we know that the US has always meddled in our affairs. But why this particular case?

Reliablemilitary intelligence sources we talked to insist that the affidavits of Mancao and Dumlao will implicate Estrada, as what Michael Ray Aquino’s will later do. They are convinced that this campaign, which involves the US, vividly betrays Uncle Sam’s fear of Estrada as being the only serious obstacle to its 2010 plan of installing a new Gloria Arroyo puppet in the guise of someone invited to Obama’s National Prayer Breakfast no less?

but, if so, it would seem that gma isn’t playing along with america, not the way the dept of justice is rather assiduously trying to pin the murders on lacson instead.   so wazzup wazzup?   what’s the deal between gma and erap?   bati na ba sila?   bakit nila pinagtutulungan si ping?   even fvr’s joe almonte has jumped in, also making diin ping lacson based on dacer’s letters daw, and dacer allegedly having told a daughter that if anything were to happen to him, ping would be to blame.

and yet there are these very intriguing stories about fvr and almonte.   check out politicaljunkie’s A few things you might find interesting about the Bubby Dacer case, which includes sol vanzi’s newsflash report about general almonte . . .

DACERS ASKED TO COMMENT ON PRIEST’S EXPOSE

Manila, April 9, 2001 – The family of public relations man Salvador “Bubby” Dacer was asked yesterday to comment on the statements of a Parañaque priest over the possible knowledge of former President Ramos and his national security adviser Jose Almonte in Dacer’s disappearance.

The opposition Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino said yesterday: “We appeal to the Dacer family to come out and confirm or deny Fr. (Gabriel) Baldostamon’s statement. We understand the pain they must feel at the continued disappearance of their father, but they must come out in order to help shed light on this matter. Don’t be afraid of Ramos and Almonte.”

Fr. Baldostamon is the parish priest of the Our Lady of the Holy Rosary church in Sun Valley Subd. where the Dacer family lives.

He claimed to have heard Almonte “consoling” the Dacer family that should they recover or “arrange” for Dacer’s release, they would spirit him out to the United States and make it appear that he was still missing.

Baldostamon said Almonte made the statement in a breakfast meeting with the Dacer family about 10 days after his disappearance.

“Did Almonte really say that?” the LDP asked. “If he did, he must explain his intentions for doing so and why did he sound as if he had contact with Dacer’s abductors?”

. . . and also herman tiu laurel’s Investigate Almonte, about president ramos.

The story is now told to close friends by the Dacer children, Ampy and Sabina, that the Ramos visit to Dacer’s office on that fateful day of the disappearance was very uncharacteristic. In the many years of Dacer and Ramos’ professional dealings, never once did Ramos visit Dacer’s office. But on the day of Dacer’s kidnapping Ramos did, and after only an hour of waiting he started making it too obvious he was concerned—by calling media about his alarm over Dacer’s disappearance.

It could have just been traffic, a flat tire or engine trouble, a sudden family emergency, a bum stomach, an extended breakfast meeting, or a hundred other small possibilities that delayed Dacer for an hour. With cell phone service the way it is today, and service providers undermining each other by delaying interconnections or with cell sites jammed or down, an hour’s wait to get a cell phone connection happens quite frequently. So, delayed cell phone contact is not sufficient reason to panic and call media . . .

so why haven’t the media been following up on these?   takot ba sila kay almonte?    takot ba sila kay fvr?   what if ping and erap are innocent pala?   and we’re just being taken for a ride?   to what end?

of course it doesn’t make sense that dumlao and mancao are involved if it were an fvr-almonte operation.   but we don’t know enough to rule anything out.   even dumlao and mancao keep changing their statements daw.   involved ba talaga sila, o nagpapanggap lang.

“Not known to many who are following this case, Cezar Mancao and Glen Dumlao, to date have executed three sworn statements each. In this case, the contents of the affidavits are modified at each turn, and it would take some patience and perhaps extra-professional expertise to separate the grains of truth from the specks of dirt in the testimonies given by both affiants,” Lacson said.

as for dacer himself, i have no idea how he operated or who his clients were, only that he was the top public-relations guy in political manila with awesome access to the media, and he could make anyone smell good and look good.

but i do have an idea what public relations work is like.   you have to take your client’s side, with conviction, and you try not to take on clients with opposing positions para walang conflict of interest.   that is, if you want to stay sane and whole and credible.   easier said than done, i know, especially if you’re dealing with, and handling, presidents with huge egos.   how do you say no to a president (former or incumbent) without incurring his royal ire.    read fel maragay’s Man in White.

. . . Dacer, a handsome, bemoustached Spanish-looking mestizo, could hardly write journalistic pieces. But the glib-tongued Bicolano was gifted with exceptional social skills, a knack for befriending fellowmen—perhaps his most important asset that enabled him to climb to the top in his chosen profession. When big-time businessmen were locked in make-or-break competition or feud with rivals over a major project and they needed an expert in crisis PR, the name of Dacer would usually crop up. Crisis PR was his forte.

The flamboyant PR practitioner was often described as “the man in white” because he was always clad in an all-white attire. But his detractors snickered that he was the “devil in white” because of the devious scheme that he purportedly employed to attack the targets of some of his covert PR operations.

In the early 1990s, Dacer held office in a small corner at the ground floor of the Manila Hotel. But his enterprise started to ride high after Fidel Ramos assumed the presidency. He became the private publicist of Ramos and of Ramos’ most trusted Cabinet member, then National Security Adviser Jose Almonte. Not long after, Dacer transferred to a spacious room on the second floor of the hotel. He handled the PR work for the Swiss firm, Societe General de Surveillance, which had a P4-billion annual contract with the Bureau of Customs for the valuation of imported goods. He became a point man or liaison between the Philippines and Taiwan, a chore which he handled with gusto. His services were also tapped by several public officials and private individuals, as well as prominent business firms.

During the 1998 presidential elections, Ramos tried to persuade Dacer to help in the campaign of a principal ally, then House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. the Lakas standard-bearer. But Dacer begged off, opting to stay neutral because the strongest candidate, Joseph Estrada, was his kumpadre.

When Estrada became president, Dacer maintained cordial relations with him. He was occasionally asked by the then President to do some PR assignments for his administration. Dacer enjoyed easy access to the Palace, from time to time accompanying foreign businessmen during courtesy calls to the President in which investments plans were usually discussed. Dacer loved to tell people that his friendship with Estrada dated back to the days when he was a multi-awarded movie actor. Estrada played godfather when Dacer’s daughter Ampy was baptized. And when Ampy got married, Estrada was one of the wedding sponsors.

Despite his association with Estrada, the kind of political influence Dacer wielded at that time paled in comparison with the one he enjoyed during the Ramos presidency. Estrada somewhat kept him at a distance, perhaps because he was not sure of Dacer’s loyalty, due to his long association with Ramos and Almonte. When the Estrada government unleashed a persecution campaign against Ramos over the so-called multi-billion pesos Expo scam and other anomalies, Dacer clumsily watched from the sidelines, cautiously steering clear of the raging conflict between two men dear to him.

Dacer’s troubles began when he was dragged into the rift between then National Police director general Roberto Lastimoso and then Chief Supt. (now senator) Panfilo Lacson, who was at that time head of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force. Lastimoso’s hold on the top PNP post turned shaky amid allegation that he was remiss in his duty in going after a suspected drug lord. He sought Dacer’s help in the media war and the PR man came to his rescue. But Lastimoso lost the fight and was eventually replaced by Lacson as PNP chief . . .

in the end, minalas si dacer.   maybe he knew too much.   maybe he had become a threat.   maybe he couldn’t be trusted anymore.

but what if the demolition job on ping lacson is more of the same, because he knows too much, because he has become a threat, the way he keeps shooting his mouth off in the senate.

in that case, i’d say he’s doing the right thing.   i suggest a pahabol privilege speech on the bentain case,  the fvr-almonte connection, even the american connection, and anything else relevant that he knows of.   so if anything should happen to him (cross our fingers, knock on wood)  we’d have a better idea whom (or whom-whom) to blame.