2 Cebu City establishments face shutdown over flood woes

CEBU CITY — Two prominent business establishments in this city may be closed if they refuse to address flooding in their backyards.

City Mayor Mike Rama threatened to shut down Cebu Country Club and Gaisano Country Mall, both in Barangay Banilad, if they do not take measures to address the flow of rainwater through their drainage systems.

“There will be no sacred cows. I told them (Cebu City Hall task force against flooding) to demolish parts of the Gaisano Country Mall,” he said during the maiden radio program titled “Ingna’ng Mayor (Tell the Mayor)” through the Sugboanon Channel, which is part of the People’s Progressive Radio Media Network.

“I told (my staff) during the meeting that we will (also) invade (Cebu) Country Club. We will close it if they will not help us. I’m very bold about this. They did something that caused a waterway there to be diverted,” he added.

Gaisano Country Mall was built in the early 1990s while Cebu Country Club, which has the oldest golf course in Cebu, was incorporated and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 11, 1928.

Other Infrastructures

Rama also asked owners of other infrastructure in the city not to impede the flow of waterways.

Among them was the Kuan Tao Sian Temple, also in Banilad, where a part of the building encroached on a creek.

Rama also asked officials of the University of San Carlos-Talamban campus to help fix a waterway, which had been blamed for flooding in the area.

The Gaisano Main Mall on Colon Street in downtown Cebu City was also told to demolish a portion of their establishment.

“We have a lot of things to do. (But), we now have the direction. And that is to destroy (everything that impedes the waterways). We will do that without sparing anyone,” Rama said.

Lead person

The mayor appointed retired Army general Melquaides Feliciano to lead the clearing of establishments and structures situated within the three-meter easement of the city’s waterways.

Feliciano served as Inter-Agency Task Force deputy implementer for the Visayas and was instrumental in lowering the number of COVID-19 cases in the city during the height of the pandemic.

Rama said he would order a “mandatory household cleanup” to generate grassroots cooperation of the public in both cleaning up the city and clearing the obstruction of waterways.

The responsibility of addressing flooding, he said, should not be carried by the city government alone.

Participatory approach

“There should be a participatory approach. The city government can’t do it on its own,” the mayor said.

Rama said citizens should do their part by throwing their garbage properly and cleaning their surroundings to mitigate flooding in the city.

The city government recently encouraged owners of old business establishments and subdivisions to put up their own water impounding facilities, such as rainwater catchments, to minimize flooding in the city.

City Councilor Jerry Guardo, chairperson of the council’s committee on infrastructure, said they had been strictly requiring new developers to put up their own rainwater catchments in compliance with the Water Conservation Ordinance of 2006.

However, establishments constructed before 2006 were not covered by the ordinance.

“The problem that we encountered is from establishments and subdivisions that were constructed before the ordinance. I don’t know if they were required to build their own catchments,” said Guardo in a media interview.

Flood mitigation

He said there is a need to revisit the city’s flood mitigation programs after a series of flooding, particularly in Banilad, last month.

Guardo said he would collaborate with the Office of the Building Official (OBO) and invite developers of old and new establishments in the city to determine if their rainwater catchment compliance is still sufficient.

“We will invite them, together with OBO, one by one. We will check and revisit their compliance with the rainwater catchment,” he said.

“We will mandate the developers to really build sufficient rainwater catchments that can store water based on their current land area,” he added.

Last month, heavy rains hit the cities of Cebu and Mandaue, transforming major streets into rivers. Houses and commercial areas were swamped in floodwater reaching as high as two meters.

Hundreds of commuters were stranded as floodwaters started to surge after barely half an hour of heavy rain.

Condominiums blamed

In an earlier statement, Gaisano Country Mall, whose parking lot was severely flooded on Sept. 4, believed the “unprecedented” incident had something to do with the construction of high-rise condominiums in the area.

For more than 30 years since the mall was built, it has withstood superstorms and cyclones and has never been flooded.

The drainage systems of high-rise condominiums, it said, must have contributed to this unprecedented deluge within the parking bay of Gaisano Country Mall and the other surrounding areas.

The mall management said it was conducting a thorough investigation to determine what should be done to prevent the same or similar incident.

The investigation, it said, includes a detailed assessment of its drainage system and those neighboring the mall within the vicinity to identify the root causes and areas for improvement.

The Inquirer has yet to get a statement from Cebu Country Club.

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