THE MOST worrisome revelation from Iloilo City’s latest flooding is not simply that 65 barangays went underwater or that 2,529 people were affected. It is the admission that the city’s drainage system can no longer cope with intense rainfall — and that a comprehensive drainage plan is still only at the feasibility-study stage.
For a rapidly developing city that aspires to become one of the country’s premier urban centers, this is embarrassing. Iloilo cannot continue building upward and outward while the infrastructure beneath its streets struggles to carry away the rain.
City Engineer Mavi Gustilo was unequivocal: existing drainage facilities need upgrading because they are no longer sufficient for the volume generated by intense rainfall. The problem is compounded when swollen creeks submerge drainage outfalls, preventing stormwater from escaping communities.
This means Iloilo is confronting something more serious than clogged canals. It is dealing with a drainage network whose capacity and configuration may no longer correspond to the realities of the city it serves.
Urban growth changes how water behaves. As open spaces give way to roads, buildings and other concrete surfaces, rainfall has fewer places to soak into the ground. More water becomes runoff, and that runoff must go somewhere. If drainage infrastructure and waterways cannot accommodate it, streets and neighborhoods become temporary reservoirs.
That is why a comprehensive drainage plan cannot remain merely another study indefinitely. Such a plan must determine where water originates, where it flows, which drainage lines are undersized, where bottlenecks occur, which outfalls become submerged, what waterways require rehabilitation, and where pumps, floodgates, retention facilities and other interventions are necessary. The City Engineer’s Office itself has identified dredging, slope protection, floodgates and pumping systems among possible measures.
But these interventions should form part of one coherent system rather than become disconnected projects undertaken whenever another neighborhood floods.
Government must also confront obstructions along waterways. Garbage and debris are restricting drainage, while bridges, concrete structures, informal settlements and private developments near waterways have been identified as impediments to water flow. Addressing flooding therefore requires not only engineering but also stricter solid-waste management, enforcement of easements, responsible land-use regulation and humane relocation where necessary.
Government cannot prevent every flood. Rainfall can exceed even the best-designed infrastructure. But there is a considerable difference between flooding that occurs despite adequate preparation and flooding aggravated by infrastructure that government already knows is inadequate.
The city now has that knowledge. What follows must therefore be urgency.
The feasibility study should move toward a definite timetable for completing the comprehensive drainage plan. Once completed, the plan must be translated into priorities, budgets and actual construction.
The city must also ensure that future development does not worsen an already strained drainage network. Urban expansion and drainage planning should proceed together. Every major development that adds concrete and runoff must be considered in relation to the capacity of the surrounding drainage system and receiving waterways.
Iloilo has spent years presenting itself as a progressive and increasingly competitive city. That progress should be visible not only in new buildings, business districts and investment figures but also in the basic infrastructure that protects people when the skies open.
Iloilo needs a drainage blueprint — comprehensive, technically sound, adequately funded and implemented with urgency. Because a city cannot seriously plan its future while leaving unanswered one of the most basic questions of urban development: When the rain comes, where will all the water go?
