What do we usually hear every time a heavy downpour inundates Cebu City? We hear the same explanations.
“The rainfall was unprecedented.” “The drainage could not cope.” “It was a natural calamity.” Those statements may be true. But they are incomplete.
Rain does not throw plastic bottles into rivers. It does not dump old mattresses into creeks. Neither does it allow garbage to pile up beside canals or on street corners. Rain does not permit illegal structures to constrict the waterways. Rain merely exposes what government officials have ignored for years.
As a result of the flooding on July 30, 2026, that submerged houses in Sitio Tambisan, Barangay Tisa, Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival on Aug. 3, announced plans to acquire a one-hectare property in the Tisa-Labangon area this year to serve as a floodwater reservoir.
The city officials attributed persistent flooding to physical bottlenecks that narrowed natural water channels from six to 10 feet down to about three feet, alongside unchecked upland rainwater runoff.
Cebu City currently has 104 flood-control projects and about 70 percent have been completed. These completed structures span major rivers—including the Butuanon, Lahug, Guadalupe, Kinalumsan and Mananga—as well as drainage networks across various urban barangays, such as Capitol Site, Luz, Sambag 1 and Tinago.
But Mayor Archival said: “If you ask me whether they helped, maybe they did, but only to a small extent.”
Actually, the floodwaters are not the problem. They are the evidence. Every flooded street is a report card of failed governance.
For more than two decades, Republic Act (RA) 9003, the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, has required waste segregation at source, barangay materials recovery facilities, composting, regular collection, and ecological disposal. Yet many barangays continue to treat garbage collection as simply hauling mixed waste from one place to another.
Segregation is the exception rather than the rule. The Materials Recovery Facilities exist only on paper in some places. Illegal dumping continues almost openly. Then everyone acts surprised when waterways become giant garbage bins.
The city government must stop relying on emergency clean-up drives every time floods occur. Prevention is infinitely cheaper than rescue operations.
My sincere and unsolicited suggestion to City Hall is straightforward.
First, enforce the law without fear or favor. Cebu does not need another ordinance if existing laws remain unenforced. Those caught dumping garbage into rivers, creeks, drainage canals, or vacant lots should be prosecuted—not merely warned.
Second, make barangays truly accountable. Flood prevention begins at the barangay level. Every barangay captain should know the condition of every drainage line, creek, and canal within the barangay. If garbage accumulates repeatedly in the same area, someone must answer why.
Third, institutionalize year-round desilting and de-clogging. Drainage maintenance should never begin only when the weather bureau announces an approaching storm.
Fourth, involve the public continuously. Flood prevention is not solely the government’s responsibility. Citizens who complain about flooding while throwing trash into esteros become accomplices to the very problem they condemn.
Finally, abandon the culture of reaction. Government should not become visible only after the floodwaters have reached people’s knees, or submerged residential houses.
Leadership is measured before disasters occur—not during photo opportunities while distributing relief goods.
Nature will continue sending heavy rains to Cebu. Climate change guarantees that.
The real question is whether government officials will continue offering familiar excuses every rainy season or finally build a city resilient enough to withstand what nature inevitably brings.
And if, after 25 years of RA 9003, Cebu still drowns in plastic, clogged canals, and preventable floods, perhaps the problem is no longer the law. It is the political will to enforce it. The rain did not fail Cebu. We failed Cebu before the rain came.
Public office does not end with responding to disasters. It begins with preventing them. Every peso spent on rescue boats, relief goods, and emergency operations is a reminder that preventive governance failed somewhere upstream.
The most successful city is not the one that conducts the biggest relief operation after a storm, but the one where rescue operations become the exception because floods have been minimized through planning, discipline, and faithful enforcement of the law.
Floodwaters eventually recede. Public memory should not. Every submerged street should remind Cebuanos that elections are also about drainage, garbage collection, law enforcement, and competent governance. Nature sends the rain. Leaders decide whether it becomes a flood.