EQUIPMENT and volunteers gathered by the Minalin local government are mobilized to repair damaged portions of the San Fernando-Sto. Tomas-Minalin tail dike. The only backhoe that the Department of Public Works and Highways sent has broken down. TONETTE OREJAS / INQUIRER Central Luzon
MINALIN, Pampanga, Philippines—Since Monday, Rico Yutuc and his group of 35 volunteers have been taking advantage of the sunny days, making walls of sandbags to enclose a 40-meter gap at the San Fernando-Santo Tomas-Minalin tail dike and repair it before another storm hits the province.
Far down Sapang Labuan, five backhoes, lent by local businessmen, are scooping sand out of the channel to allow more water to flow into Manila Bay.
Pampanga Rep. Juan Pablo Bondoc donated his salary for six months, worth about P500,000, to buy fuel to keep the equipment working eight hours daily. Gov. Lilia Pineda released funds for fuel, too.
The backhoe that the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) had sent to this town had malfunctioned, and has not been repaired for over a week now.
In Minalin’s case, disaster response is undertaken more by the local government and private sector-led Save Minalin Movement and not so much by the national government through the DPWH.
The P139 million that local officials asked from President Aquino after the habagat (southwest monsoon) induced rain in 2011, has been made available only in March.
However, the rehabilitation of the tail dike has yet to start and is bound to be delayed as local officials have yet to agree on a common design, minutes of a meeting with DPWH officials showed.
An accompanying project seeking to ease the flooding near the tail dike, worth P800 million, and aiming to revive the old channel of the Pasig-Potrero River, is still being studied, said Isabelita Manalo, assistant chief of the DPWH’s Mount Pinatubo Emergency Project Management Office.
For Bondoc, who represents towns comprising the province’s fourth district at the mouth of the Pampanga River, the solution is simple: Stop making the tail dike a dam for water and sand.
“The water should be led to Pasac downstream of the Pampanga River and Manila Bay,” he said.
Crucial to this, Bondoc said, is the Sapang Labuan, a channel heavily silted by sand spewed out by Mt. Pinatubo’s 1991 eruptions and which rains washed down yearly.
During dry months, the tail dike looks like a large sand pocket and, during the rainy season, shifts to a large pond overflowing with water that flood fishponds and communities.
“This shouldn’t be a catchment of sand and water. We shouldn’t be trapping sand and water here,” Bondoc said.
Upstream is the 56-kilometer FVR Megadike, Pampanga’s last defense against lahar.
Mayor Jomar Hizon, of nearby Bacolor town, is against raising the tail dike by two meters because that would trap more sand and water than draining it out.
Quarrying sand near the tail dike is not helpful either because it trains the water near the structure, saturating and softening it, Minalin Mayor Edgar Flores said.
“Minalin may seem a small town and not worthy of being saved. But it is important because we produce more eggs and tilapia than any other town in Central Luzon,” Flores said. “I beg the DPWH to help us.”