Saturday, June 02, 2007 Editorials: Of streets and rivers
CEBU City Mayor Tomas Osmeña always has a penchant for making weird suggestions and blurting out unstudied ideas, apparently knowing that talk is cheap.
Just two of the latest instances: carving out another barangay in Pardo by buying tracts of land there and making rivers out of streets to solve the city’s flooding problem.
Let us set aide that new barangay plan, which is less of a concern for residents than solving the perennial drainage problem that has gotten worse the past few years.
Waterways
Actually, the mayor has gotten the obvious: that flooding, whether in Cebu City of in other places, is the result of water unable to find a way out, in this case the sea.
But he was not correct when he said that “we have no rivers” considering that rivers like in Guadalupe and Lahug snake across the city and esteros exist in many areas.
These waterways are underutilized because of poor drainage planning and neglect that resulted in their being clogged up by eroded soil, illegal structure and human waste.
That point blows away the mayor’s main argument for his streets-as-rivers push.
Function
Also, a river is a river and a street is a street, meaning each has a reason for being.
It is only in a poorly planned urban center like Cebu City that streets become rivers when rain falls, disturbing or even stopping the flow of traffic.
The main goal then is to rid streets of impediments to its full functioning, the reason why even as drainage parallels or crosses streets they are dug up and then covered.
The problem of flooding need not be solved by spending billions of pesos for supposedly novel but shaky approaches but by using tested and effective methods.
Comprehensive plan
Cebu City for the past years has been providing solutions to the drainage problem on a piecemeal basis, something that is no longer viable considering its rapid growth.
That City Hall is now drafting a comprehensive drainage master plan is laudable, and it needs to follow that up by looking for the money to implement it immediately.
Putting in place a bigger and well-planned drainage system is the only way to go.
