POOR urban planning over past decades created Cebu City’s long-term flooding problems, but a City official says current efforts are shifting from reactive fixes to plan-based solutions.
Jhomarie Villarojo, head of the Planning and Design Division of the Cebu City Planning and Development Office, said past administrations failed to build a long-term strategy.
Rapid urbanization, he added, compounded the problem by paving over rivers, wetlands and natural floodplains.
Villarojo said that for many years the City relied on reactive solutions. He was one of the panelists of the forum, “Bahâ! Tracing Cebu’s Lost Waterways, Facing the Floods,” at Palm Grass The Cebu Heritage Hotel in downtown Cebu City on Saturday afternoon, Aug. 16, 2025, hours after a downpour resulted in heavy flooding in Metro Cebu.
He said the current administration of Mayor Nestor Archival is moving toward a plan-based approach, including updates to the drainage master plan and use of data-driven tools, such as Google’s geofencing, to map flood-prone areas.
The official also outlined “soft infrastructure” measures, including a “sponge city” concept that reintroduces trees along river corridors to absorb runoff.
Such projects, he cautioned, would require political will and decades of persistence.
Villarojo’s statement on past administrations’ failure to build a long-term strategy in solving the city’s flooding woes drew pushback from a forum participant, Ed Karlon Rama, a former City Hall official who defended the record of the previous administration under former mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia.
Rama, who now writes an opinion column for SunStar Cebu, cited the long-delayed approval of the Comprehensive Land Use Plan (Clup) before Garcia left office in June. The Clup now restricts development in upland zones and cleared easements to improve water flow. He also pointed to updated sewerage and drainage plans prepared with the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
In a forum last July, structural integrity specialist Carlo Jaca said temporary fixes such as desilting and declogging rivers are not enough to address flooding.
Rapid urbanization
He said rapid urbanization continues to disrupt the natural flow of water and urged officials to require rainwater catchment systems in every barangay. He also called for the enforcement of zoning rules, which he noted are often ignored or bent in favor of private development.
Jaca pointed to Bonifacio Global City’s underground retention tanks as a model and called for ordinances mandating impounding facilities in new projects. He warned that without proper zoning and strict enforcement, Metro Cebu faces worsening floods alongside a growing water shortage.
Archival has promoted immediate measures, such as clearing river mouths of debris and desilting gabion dams in mountain villages, while pledging other solutions like tree planting and impounding projects that can double as water reserves during dry months.
Both Villarojo and Jaca drew on international examples to show how recovery takes time. Villarojo noted that Yokohama, Japan, needed half a century to contain similar flooding. For Cebu, the challenge, he said, is whether leaders and residents can sustain the commitment to undo decades of neglect. / EHP