ONE coverage as a reporter that left a deep impression in my mind was the one I did in the Pardo uplands years ago. A home owner complained about the flooding that he thought was a sole byproduct of development work on the nearby hills. Every time it rained, water and soil would enter the lower floor of the house, damaging everything, including the appliances.
When I checked, I found out that the developer who sold the house to the homeowner built the structure on the part of the slope that was once a waterway. The developer was the family of a politician who later occupied a high City Hall position. In sum, the flooding incident was the result of everything that is wrong with urban planning and even governance.
How is government monitoring and ensuring that environmental regulations are being followed as developers in the province are continuing to seize from slash-and-burn farmers the Cebu uplands? How much respect is given to the greenery and the traditional waterways?
I used to regularly jog-walk up the slope overlooking our residence to not only sweat but also to wallow in God’s creation. There is currently a subdivision project atop one of the hills and on the other hills nearby. But when I jogged and walked there, development was almost nil. I would often sit on the slope and watch the hills in what a friend once described as a “crumpled paper terrain.”
One of the nearby hills was Maghaway, which is under Talisay City’s jurisdiction. I got interested in it because the lower slopes of the hill hosts an old subdivision where some of our colleagues in media reside. Up the peak was a concrete structure with a high fence that I reckon is the city’s main prison facility. All in all, I found Maghaway worthy of a visit, which I did when City Administrator Floro Casas Jr. celebrated his birthday last Monday. He lives in one of the subdivisions there.
I went there at night, but still I was amazed at how developers have transformed this once largely barren slope into an asphalt-and-concrete jungle that makes one forget that the place was once a farmland inhabited by marginalized farmers who were at the mercy of the seasons. What was once nature’s enclave has become an urban jungle at the mercy of humans.
Which reminds me of my return visit to Plaza Housing for the birthday celebration of another friend, my media colleague and former barangay captain Eliodoro “Yody” Sanchez. I was also amazed at the transformation of the place into an urban jungle. The building of structures and the opening of more roads plus the asphalting makes one forget how the place looked when former governor Emilio Osmeña initiated the housing project.
Nature took time—hundreds, even thousands of years—to shape the old upland Cebu terrain, with greenery and waterways among the major features. In only a few decades, Cebuanos have allowed developers to reshape what took centuries to form. How much respect are they giving to God’s creation?