Wednesday, November 28, 2007 Council gives planners 1 week to submit recommendations
THE Cebu City Council gave the City Planning and Development Office (CPDO) until next week to submit its recommendations incorporating the concerns previously raised by the body’s members on the city’s drainage master plan.
This came after assistant CPDO head Conception Encabo wrote the council and asked for the plan’s approval.
The council merely noted the request in its session last week and asked for the CPDO’s recommendations for the contractor to consider for possible plan revision before the body approves it.
Last August, the Cebu City Hall consultants hired to come up with a comprehensive drainage master plan asked the City’s help to “compel” barangays to submit their recommendations.
Flood, drainage
The consultants said only a few of the 48 urban barangays that were sent copies of their detailed “flood mitigation and drainage study” gave their comments months after.
While the consultants already fulfilled the contracted task of preparing the macroplan, the City Council told them September last year to also consult the barangays.
The City, in the second quarter of 2004, entered into a P13.6-million contract with Genson-TCGI-Woodfields-Spaces Joint Venture to study the City’s overall drainage system.
The study covered Cebu City’s 79,000-square-kilometer land area of 48 urban barangays, the North Reclamation Area, and the South Road Properties.
The firm already submitted the electronic files of the topographic and other surveys in relation to the plan last year. The environment and infrastructure committees of the City Development Council (CDC) have reviewed the plan, while the City Council had conducted weekly hearings.
CDPO Chief Nigel Paul Villarete had said that the CDC would schedule the prioritization of drainage projects.
No one, however, knows when the actual implementation can start because the two-phase plan needs at least P1 billion.
Drainage has always been a problem for the City because streets, especially in the downtown area, gets flooded every time it rains.
City Hall is already regulating and minimizing drainage projects in the upland areas so that flood-prone areas could cope with the volume of water rushing down the mountains and uptown barangays.
Nat’l, govt. help
The City also plans to put up “retarding dams,” which would catch rainwater and let this trickle to the coastal areas at a controlled pace and volume.
The City is already finishing its comprehensive drainage master plan but needs at least P700 million for the first phase.
Vice Mayor Michael Rama earlier said the City might ask for help from the National Government as it could not afford such an amount for the project.
The mayor had said that the City has been addressing the drainage problem incorrectly for the past 40 years; but it has already “fine-tuned the problem.” (RHM)
