- 1 week ago
Cebu continues to face flooding despite ongoing projects. What’s missing? We speak with SWCFI Executive Director William Granert for expert insights.
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01:59He will share his insights on why current efforts may fall short and what approaches could lead to more lasting improvements.
02:07Good afternoon, Sir William.
02:11Hi.
02:12Good afternoon to both of you.
02:14Good afternoon.
02:15It's been a long time since, you know, DJ, before when I was still a reporter, Sir William, or we fondly called him Bill, and his wife, Ida, were our regular sources as far as water problems are concerned.
02:32So it's nice to see you again, Bill.
02:37It's been a while.
02:38Yes, to kick off our conversations this morning, I think it would be best for you to explain what the foundation is all about.
02:48Okay.
02:50The Soil and Water Conservation Foundation is actually in its 37th year.
02:56We were founded in 1988 by a group of consultants.
03:01I was working with DNR at that time in the rain fed resources development project, and we had a problem with the bureaucracy in the project.
03:12If you ordered a kilo of seed, by the time it got there, the seed was not viable.
03:16So he said, we'll set up a type of foundation in order to assist the local people in sort of short-cutting, getting rid of some of the red tape.
03:26So we started in 1988.
03:29We started with three watershed projects that were funded by Rotary International.
03:36At that time, we had a contact in Vancouver, who was one of the district governors.
03:42And so we had the Manunga watershed, the Manhuyad watershed in Negros Oriental, and part of the Bago River system in the other side, in the Occidental side.
03:54The Bago River is so big, we only took a very small portion, and that led to the slopes of Canlaon Volcano.
04:02So we started with that.
04:05It was interesting because we didn't have an accounting system.
04:08So the one who got us the money from CEDA, the Canadian government agency, and Rotary International, put in a computerized system.
04:24So we were actually one of the first NGOs in Cebu that actually had a computerized system.
04:30And we taught a number of other NGOs how to use the system, and we gave it to them, the thing.
04:35And there was no loyalty on it or whatnot.
04:37It's to make it a little more efficient, was it the thing.
04:40So anyway, we started with that.
04:42And I think we're at a project 102 now in the full time that we've gone into it.
04:51The largest project, monetary-wise, has been close to a million dollars, and the average is about $40,000.
04:58I'm not going to give you a peso amount because the peso keeps changing.
05:02So it depends upon what time you're talking to me.
05:06But anyway, we generally work with grassroots communities, not so much in the urban areas,
05:13although there are a number of NGOs that we partner with when we're doing this.
05:17So when we go into a community, we try to have the community invite us in rather than going in there and saying that, you know,
05:29here we are, we have something to do, you want to do it.
05:33We go in there and we actually spend about a week planning the project with them
05:37and then making sure that we don't try to do everything at once.
05:41We start with one thing and what's successful.
05:43And for us, it's always been potable water because when you deal with potable water,
05:49you automatically deal with health issues.
05:52You deal with livestock that's healthier.
05:56You deal with reduction in labor of hauling the water.
06:00And, of course, the skin diseases and the time that's lost from the farm area itself.
06:05And very few people argue with clean water.
06:08So it's easier to get into the community.
06:11And then we go into different things like agroforestry or crop production systems.
06:17Soil conservation, of course, is the basic because if you lose your soil, you lose your resource.
06:23So where are you going to do your planting and whatnot?
06:25So we introduced contour farming that we had.
06:30And if you look, one of our major sites was in Bubah in Cebu City and the surrounding barangays there.
06:37So a lot of the contours that you see there were actually ones that were started by our farmers.
06:42And then we had a site in Argyle up in the mountains there.
06:46And then one eventually in Pinamonahan.
06:49And then one outside Legaspi of all places because we had a representative that we trained that moved there
06:56and they asked us to come in.
06:57And so we've been in regions 6, 7, 10, 11, and 5, although we concentrate on Cebu and Bohol now with what we're doing.
07:09And our present projects deal with biodiversity conservation as a way to address climate change,
07:16either mitigation or adaptation.
07:19So the higher the biodiversity, the better chance you have to succeed in dealing with the aberrations that you have.
07:27Well, you saw one of them, which is the cause of the flooding now.
07:32If you remember Odette, when it came around, it had very heavy winds but little rain.
07:37This one had winds that were less strong than Odette, but it had the rain on it.
07:46So I think Muktan's recorded 18 centimeters of rain, although when you get into the mountains,
07:54it's probably considerably higher than that.
07:56And one site in Toledo City had 48 centimeters, which is almost a half a meter of rain.
08:03So anyway, we'll get to that a little bit later.
08:06But we deal with strengthening the rural communities in natural resource management.
08:12We also work in protected area management.
08:17My wife was a member of the executive committee of Central Cebu Protected Landscape up until last year
08:23when it started in 2008.
08:26And before that, we were in the Mononga watershed with the projects that we have there for the thing.
08:32So it depends upon where we are and the interest.
08:36And the one we do in BEHOL now is with DRRM, or Disaster Risk Reduction Management.
08:43But planning at the barungai level.
08:48We found out that a lot of the plans that actually come from the barungai are you fill out a 30-page checklist,
08:56and that's your plan.
08:57And then when something comes along with an emergency, nobody knows what to do.
09:02So it takes us about a year to make up a plan with the community, including biodiversity, conservation, protection.
09:10Most of our areas are on what we call karst landscapes, which most of Cebu is karst.
09:18People are familiar with the term Anapok.
09:21Yes.
09:22Limestone, rather than karst is an international term that they have for limestone.
09:27And if you look on a map, it looks like areas where you have hollow blocks in the design of the map.
09:33If you look at the geology map, that's the limestone area.
09:37So we teach that.
09:40So that's 37 years working with communities.
09:44So in your opinion, and this is for the benefit of ordinary Cebuanos who experience the typhoon,
09:52how would you describe what happened during the day of the flood?
09:59Okay.
10:00Well, for one thing, all of the water comes from the watersheds.
10:05And to look at the watershed, you have to think about Plungana with a hole in the side,
10:12which is the one river that empties.
10:14So like if you have the Manunga watershed, you have the Manunga River,
10:18which goes through Tulisai and part of Cebu City.
10:22Or the Kot Kot watershed, which goes through the boundary of Liloan and Compostela.
10:28And then the Lusaran River, which are the major ones, which goes out through Bulumban.
10:34So it depends.
10:36But you have to think of it as a unit.
10:40This is the one thing that we have problems with,
10:42is they try to divide the unit into sections.
10:46And you can't do that because I'm afraid water doesn't recognize political boundaries.
10:51Correct.
10:52Bill, you mentioned earlier the outflows.
10:56It goes to Tulisai and part of Cebu City.
11:00The boundaries of Liloan and Compostela and Balamban.
11:03All these places were really affected by the typhoon.
11:09So what does, when in fact, all these areas have flood control projects.
11:15You know, from 2016 to 2025, within these four water river systems,
11:23Mananga, Butuanon, Kot Kot and Lusaran,
11:28there's about 10.6 billion of flood control projects.
11:33So it did not help?
11:36Well, I'll give you the example that I've seen of the one in Liloan.
11:40And the, you have to look at, the river naturally has what they call a floodplain.
11:49And this is where the excess water goes.
11:51So as it comes down the mountain, it spreads out and then eventually works its way into the ocean.
11:57However, what we do in here, in many countries, is that you use it as a real estate area.
12:05So you build communities on it.
12:07And when you build a community on it, you essentially waterproof the area,
12:12either cement roads or rooftops if you take the composite of all the ways in which the water is prevented.
12:19So that water has to go somewhere.
12:21It's not going to stay there and be happy sitting in somebody's backyard and whatnot.
12:26It'll move out.
12:27So what happens is that, like in Liloan, from what I understand,
12:32whoever the engineers were in there, they changed the course of the river.
12:37They made the floodplain smaller.
12:41And then they tried to channelize the river, putting cement dikes on both sides.
12:45But if you look at that, the moment you start fooling with that,
12:48and if you change the river from its natural course,
12:53you're asking for trouble unless you have very, very stringent rules as to how you're going to deal with it.
13:00In Talisai and the Mononga River, they had the dikes.
13:04There was such a big volume of water, it simply overflowed the dikes.
13:08Unfortunately, you had the housing developments on the other side.
13:12And then, of course, everything went, the water went right through it.
13:15You have to look at what they call the ridge-to-reef planning when you're doing something.
13:24So if you only do the flood control in the bottom part of your watershed
13:30and forget what's happening in the top part of your watershed,
13:34you're automatically in for a hard time.
13:37Because you cannot, again, it's a continuum.
13:40It's not something where you can take and do it piecemeal with the thing.
13:45You show the pictures here of the river, the one you have right now with all of the people living along the river.
13:54And then you have the dike system, which is not very high there from what you can see.
13:58It doesn't take much water to go over that.
14:01And once it goes over, then it affects everything on the other side.
14:05And if you have a very large volume of water, then you end up, the speed coming down the hill,
14:13you add that to it, and then you end up with a mess like you have there.
14:16Unfortunately, a number of people lost their lives because they couldn't get out.
14:21They thought they were safe where they were.
14:23And they weren't with the thing.
14:24So this one is an example of an overflow, but we've also seen devastation in subdivisions and real estate development.
14:36And the common observation that you can hear from residents is the water rose so fast.
14:43Can you explain to our viewers what exactly happened?
14:47Okay, well, again, you start at the top.
14:52When you have heavy rains in the upper part of your watershed, and if you look at our watersheds, they're fairly steep.
14:58So the water gains speed as it comes down.
15:02And let's say you have one little creek to begin with, and then you add five or ten others, and they all have volumes of water.
15:10That water joins in the one river that empties out the watershed near the bottom as you go down.
15:17It gets faster and faster as it travels down the slopes and whatnot.
15:22And then when it hits something, if it's channeled into an area, it takes out the area.
15:30Again, you can't blame it on the water because it's going to the ocean with the thing.
15:36But if you have such a volume, and then you add the fact that we have very little forest in the uplands that would slow the water down.
15:46If you have a heavy rain like that, if you have 30 or 40 centimeters, your forest may slow it down.
15:53It's not going to stop it.
15:54But then what happens is that you blocked all the inflow areas into the ground.
16:00Now, again, there's a very good presentation.
16:04It's a video that was done with an explanation.
16:09It's called Cebu's Flood Disaster Isn't Random.
16:13It's built on the island's geology.
16:16And you have to look at limestone.
16:19Now, limestone is one of the most sensitive systems that you have because it's prone to slides, landslides.
16:28It's full of cracks, unless you have some very hard stuff like marble that's not going to crack.
16:34But most of it will crack in one.
16:37And then what happened, then you had the earthquake in Bogo, and that exasperated the situation.
16:47It may have opened more cracks.
16:50And once they get inside, they had an interesting picture of Lamaq in Pinamungahan with this tremendous amount of water coming out of the side of the mountain.
17:01Well, that's from what I could tell is from the cave system.
17:04So, remember, underneath limestone, it can be very hollow.
17:09And that's where your drinking water is.
17:11This is why people live in limestone, because it's very good water.
17:14But when it becomes saturated, that has a lot of pressure.
17:18That continues.
17:20Your tubewood down below where it comes out, that overflows.
17:24So, it's a continuous, it's a multiplication of the water as you go down the hill.
17:30It may have been fine at the very top, but by the time it gets down to the more level areas, you have a roaring flash flood.
17:39And that's actually what, if you remember in 1983 when the Manunga Bridge was taken out.
17:45Yeah.
17:45So, I mean, it's the same type of flood.
17:49Here, you have more houses that were built along the floodplain in a precarious position and whatnot.
17:58And you can see the damage.
18:00You can't stop water like that.
18:01You just have to get out of the way.
18:04Okay.
18:04Talking about floodplains, as we can see on the video of the Talisay of the Manunga River,
18:13most of the houses that were affected by the floodwaters were in the floodplains or were used to be Manunga River but dried up.
18:23So, are there government laws that states that, you know, this should not be a residential area?
18:33Well, if you look at a river system itself without any people, if you're in a forest area,
18:39there's a 40-meter-wide edge to the river that's supposed to be protected.
18:45That's the law.
18:47If you're in an agricultural area, it's supposed to be 20 meters wide.
18:50And then when you get down in the city, it's three meters wide.
18:54That's not supposed to have anything there.
18:57It's supposed to be open land where you can have trees or bamboo or whatever you want to put along it.
19:01But the moment you put houses in it, you're asking for trouble for the thing.
19:07So, you have to look at your zoning laws and the fact that the zone – this doesn't go back to the fact that they have water.
19:16It goes back to the zoning itself and the protection.
19:19And let me go back a little bit to this whole thing.
19:25If you look at everything in the uplands here, and especially Cebu, the primary reason for doing something is economic.
19:35It's how much can I sell it for or how much is the land worth or what can I – if I build a subdivision, how much per square meter can I sell it for?
19:44So, it becomes an economic problem, but they forget that everything depends upon the natural environment that surrounds what you're doing with the thing.
19:55And sometimes when the natural environment is upset, if you want to use that term, and you have a typhoon come in and it has heavy rain.
20:05Now, remember, people don't realize you had, I think, the winds were, what, over 100, 125 kilometers an hour?
20:17When you have rain like that, and it's raining, that rain is not coming vertical.
20:25It's coming in horizontal.
20:27When Faye Wildlife was alive, when we worked with her, it said, it's like taking a fire hose and directing the fire hose at a building.
20:38That's the force of the water from the rain that's coming in with 100 and 125 kilometer an hour winds and whatnot.
20:44So, you have that damage, and then you have the accumulation.
20:48And then, of course, remember that the water coming down the hillside is carrying soil with it and rocks and pebbles and whatnot.
20:59And that's like taking sandpaper over some of these areas.
21:03And the damage is not only from the water, but it's the residue that's left over.
21:09And you can see that if you drive around Cebu City now, you have piles and piles of dirt and rock and whatnot that's come down, as you see in your pictures here with the thing.
21:21There, you have another potential problem for disease later on, because that's not clean water that you have.
21:28It's mixed with everything.
21:30So, yeah, go ahead.
21:33For a layperson like me, because we went to the back portion of Compostela yesterday, there's something actually that looks odd for a layperson like me.
21:46And what I'm referring to, when we passed through the lowlands, and then there were also bodies of water or waterways, they were not flooded.
21:54But when we reached the upland, that's where the flooding happened.
22:00And it's a severe case of flooding.
22:01And it's actually odd for a layperson like me, because why did the water stay in the upland and it did not flow downstream?
22:09Well, if it has no way to get into the ground, could be absorbed by the ground, and this is where you have your deforestation comes in, there's nothing to hold it.
22:22So, even if you have a heavy rain, the water is going to be moving fairly fast.
22:28So, even in the uplands, they have what they should have, or what they call sponge areas.
22:35And sponge areas are protected because the water can go in and it can sit in it for a while and be absorbed into the ground water.
22:42You don't have that in areas where you have no trees, you have buildings and whatnot, so I suspect that the ones where you had no flooding damage at all as the water went around it, for whatever reason, you'd have to look at the geology of the area too.
23:02Remember, it's not even, it's not even, it's not a flat plain, they have hills and they have gullies in it and whatnot.
23:10So, if you were lucky enough to be in one of, on the other side of where it was flooding, good for you with the thing.
23:19If you look at the picture you have now with the curve of the river, if you have a big flood, that flood is probably going to do its own shortcut.
23:29It may have had a big bend in it and whatnot, which is fine, the normal river, but when you have such a heavy volume of water coming down,
23:37it probably would tend to shoot across it rather than, which is a natural process over many, many years, that's what the water will do.
23:47But you have, what they have a term, I don't know, speed kills, whether it's an automobile that's over speeding or whether it's a river that's going so fast that you can't stop it.
24:04Again, you get, you get out of the way, that's about the only thing you can do.
24:08Unfortunately, a lot of these people had no warning.
24:11Yes, it does.
24:13That's another thing we don't have here.
24:15In Legaspi, they have a very good warning system, which tells you if you have so much rain in the mountains, automatically it triggers signals down below.
24:26That you better be prepared to move or there's a flood coming or whatnot.
24:31We don't have that here, from what I understand with the thing.
24:34So it's an early warning system that may be one of the solutions that we can put in.
24:39Is if I have X number of centimeters of water in the upper part of the watershed, automatically that information should be channeled to the DRRM people so the disaster would know, get ready.
24:55And then you can send out warnings to people that we have heavy mountain rains.
24:59It may be sunny down here, but it may be a terrific storm in the mountains.
25:05Yes.
25:05So it's not uniform.
25:07Yeah, it happened a lot of times.
25:09Like people in the lowlands suddenly feel flooding when it's not raining, but there's heavy rain in the mountains.
25:17Yeah, exactly.
25:19One of the other things, yeah, go ahead.
25:21Yeah, Bill.
25:22Yeah, go ahead.
25:22You asked the question.
25:23Yes.
25:24Bill, regarding the watersheds, that's Mananga, Kutkot, Lusaran, and there's Botwanon.
25:31Botwanon is another river system.
25:34But now after the flood, people are talking again of master plan.
25:41I think I've been hearing master plan for the last 20 years, but I don't know what happened to the master plans, which we have spent millions of pesos.
25:52But if the flood control projects that was installed in these river systems didn't work, because as you said, water finds its way when it's obstructed.
26:06Apparently, we have changed the flow because of the floodplains being already occupied by subdivisions, by housing developments.
26:18The developments are already there.
26:22What do you think can be done so if there's that another volume of water, there will be less damage to properties and there will be less lives lost?
26:35First of all, Ida was saying in the background here, it's a change in values.
26:46You have to stop looking at the economic returns first and figure out what's the environmental return.
26:56Remember, if you have a good environmental program, you get benefits from that.
27:02And flood mitigation or the slowing of water is one of them.
27:06You get the cooling effect of the trees and whatnot with the thing.
27:09You get the biodiversity.
27:11Your farming systems are much better.
27:15So it begins with the it's the attitude.
27:18One of the things that we teach when we're working with schools is try to strengthen an environmental ethic.
27:26And of course, you're familiar with ethics is how you make decisions.
27:30So what we try to do is get the people to make better environmental decisions.
27:36A good friend of mine once told me and said, if you have a watershed and you have people living in it, who are the actual de facto resource managers?
27:49In other words, who's actually doing the resource management?
27:53And he said, it's not the government.
27:56It's not the NGOs.
27:57It's the person who's standing on a hillside with a bolo in his hand or her hand and deciding, do I cut the tree down or do I just trim some of the branches that I need for firewood?
28:11That's your resource manager.
28:13So what we have to do is get people thinking about better resource management at the local level and at the barunga, well, sit you, barunga, and then at the municipal or city level and whatnot.
28:26But it's a mindset change.
28:30So we can't have economics.
28:32One of the things that I talked about last time is that the NADA finally put the committee for environment as a separate committee equal with the other committees before it was under economics.
28:48And it has a tendency to be lost under the economic planning and whatnot.
28:53And it's like an afterthought.
28:54But the thing is, is that the environment is going to affect anything you do.
29:01I mean, it doesn't matter if you have a business.
29:04How are you going to conduct that business if you have a meter of water in your store?
29:09If you go out to the airport, which I came back from Davao yesterday, I think it's Wilcon is one of the big department stores along the way.
29:22And they have all of their furniture outside because the whole store flooded.
29:28And then Robinson's was partially underwater for some of it.
29:32So it's not only the business people.
29:36They think, oh, I have a good business and whatnot.
29:38Forget what it's going to be when it's raining.
29:42I'll take my chances on it.
29:43And then all of a sudden you come down with this, I don't know what they're calling it, a one in 25 year, one in 10 year flood that you would get with the thing.
29:55It's going to happen again.
29:57You can guarantee that because climate change has made the typhoon stronger.
30:02And the damage, of course, is stronger when you have a stronger typhoon.
30:07So even if some of them tend to move south now, we're expecting at least three more storms before the end of the year.
30:16Hopefully they will be smaller storms rather than major typhoons.
30:21But we're still going to get hit.
30:22And those poor people in northern Luzon, they just had a big storm.
30:27And then they went through the area again at a super typhoon strait.
30:33So it's very hard to deal with all of these problems and whatnot if your mindset is, again, what's my economic return of whatever I'm doing?
30:44Whether it's a farm or whether it's a business in the community or let's say it's a flood control project that is there.
30:54I'm sorry to say it's simply for the money rather than what's the long term effect.
30:59Yes.
31:00Now, the other thing with it, you mentioned the master plans.
31:05One of the biggest problems in this country, and I've been here 50 years, so I'm familiar with a lot of the government stuff because I've worked for some government agencies.
31:16The planning horizon for a mayor is three years.
31:22In other words, that's the time he's in office.
31:25Fine if I can get two more elections out of it, I'll be there for nine years.
31:30But if I have somebody come in that's in my opponent comes in and my opponent wins the election, a lot of times my projects that were started during my term are cut off and new projects are put in.
31:44When we're dealing with watershed management, which is all this water and everything in it, you're talking 20 to 30 years to come up to a very stable program where everybody understands.
31:57The other thing that we have is another friend of mine told me, he said, Central Cebu protected landscape is a giant real estate deal.
32:09Oh.
32:09And if you look at that, the people are, you have the more, the richer people down here, they go in and they buy lots or they buy the puesto, the tax declaration.
32:21And then they build a summer home there or a cottage or whatnot and whatnot and then the people move out.
32:27But where do they move?
32:28They sit there at the edge of the property they once moved.
32:31But Bill.
32:32Okay.
32:32That, that, yeah, go ahead.
32:34But Bill, those, the property under the protected, Central Cebu protected landscape, it's not supposed to be for real estate, correct?
32:46Right.
32:47Right.
32:47The thing, it's, what it is, it's supposed to be, if you, there is private property because it was declared in 2008 with a thing.
32:56But you're supposed to have an annotated title with what you can do and cannot do in that property.
33:04And that's not followed at all.
33:06So, it's the DN, what agency is supposed to monitor this?
33:11Well, okay, it's, it's, it's supposed to be the protected area management board, which is run, DNR is the convener of the protected area management board.
33:22But here you run into who, how many members do you have?
33:25Like, I think it's 70 plus because all the Brungi captains are members.
33:31And then you have representatives of the, or different, either city or, or municipality, and then five NGOs out of the whole thing.
33:42Yeah.
33:42This one is for, I'm sorry, continue.
33:45Yeah, go ahead.
33:46No, but the thing is, is that what's, what's the priority of your Brungi captains?
33:51Okay.
33:52Economic income for his constituents or her constituents.
33:56Not the environment.
33:59And, and, and, and so.
34:00I'm sorry.
34:02Yeah, go ahead.
34:02No, go ahead.
34:03So, this one actually is for, for our viewers, no, so that they can also do their part either on taking action or supporting the action.
34:12We've asked our guests about this question, but I think you're also among the experts that our viewers can learn from.
34:20We are hearing terms like national parks, which eventually some of the sections were, as you mentioned, converted into protected landscape.
34:30Can you educate us more?
34:32What's the difference between the two?
34:34Okay, well, if you look, they had Central Cebu National Park, which is, I think, 1934, when it was declared, the whole part of Luceran and the surrounding.
34:45You had Sudlan National Park, which is part of Sudlan, which no longer exists because of the cave systems up there.
34:52What happened was they changed the designation from a national park because the boundaries, theoretically, there's supposed to be nobody inside of national park.
35:06That doesn't hold in Cebu and a lot of other areas.
35:11Like, I own national park with a thing.
35:15The only place I can think where you don't have people are at the edge of the volcano.
35:19I mean, the living up on the top, that's the only place you don't find people.
35:24But here, a protected landscape, it broadens the area, and they used to have, I think, seven land uses within it, from strict protection all the way down to multiple use.
35:37Then they came along and made it protection and multiple use.
35:41I'm sorry, I don't agree with that.
35:43There are too many areas that have to be protected.
35:46But there's another thing people don't realize.
35:49They have an 18% slope.
35:52Yeah, the law.
35:53The law says the 18% slope and above is forest land.
35:57Okay, and then below it is where you can have your A and D lands and whatnot.
36:04That's the national law, except Cebu is exempt, as are the Cordeliers.
36:10So, that means I can go in above 18% and do what I want with the thing, because I don't have the rule that says it's supposed to be forest.
36:20So, you have a problem here.
36:21Can somebody plug in the computer?
36:23Just a minute, my battery says it wants some, it's hungry.
36:29Just a moment.
36:31I got it.
36:32The reason, actually, I got interested about the question, because my next question, supposedly, is, at least when his battery is no longer hungry, is, why is Cebu exempt from these guidelines or laws?
36:49Bill, why was Cebu exempted?
36:54Well, this had to do with the governorships in the past, because, again, it's a real estate deal.
37:01There's no...
37:02You want to sell the land.
37:04You make money off the land.
37:06Besides, a lot of Cebu is above 18%.
37:08So, that would exclude a lot of the land where you have the subdivisions now, with the thing, and the type of structures you should have.
37:17You shouldn't have farming on slopes without proper soil conservation measures, with the same, but that doesn't happen, because people claim the land, and then they have somebody come in as a tenant.
37:32I don't want to use the term tenant, but that's what it is.
37:35Yes.
37:35So, if somebody else is farming the land, the owner, or the perceived owner, lives in the lowland, with the thing.
37:42So, the...
37:43Yeah, Bill, from National Park, it has been renamed to Protected Area.
37:48I think there's so much developments in the upland, even inside the watershed.
37:55There's...
37:56For me, like, we cannot...
37:59There's no way we can't control them right now, but what can be done?
38:03Is there still remedy for us so that there will be, you know, to avoid another typhoon, Tino?
38:13Okay.
38:14Well, again, you're going to have to get serious about implementing the rules and regulations you have.
38:20If you don't, you'll still end up with these flash floods.
38:23And the people down below...
38:25One of the other things is they say, well, we don't have enough funds to protect the uplands in the protected area.
38:32A number of years ago, Ida, when they were on the Protected Area Management Board,
38:37they wanted to talk to MCWD about adding one peso per cubic meter that would go into a trust fund
38:48for protection of the upland areas, whatever types of activities you have.
38:54And water is cheap here.
38:57If you look at the cost up to 30 cubic meters, which is one cubic meter a month per day per household, it's very cheap.
39:06Adding one peso is not going to be a big expense for people.
39:11But we estimated a number of years ago that would raise at least 20 million a year
39:17just for the protection of the watershed, because everybody expects the people who are living in the upland areas
39:23to protect the watershed so that I can drink the water down here that I get through the hot loop and weir system
39:31and TISA and MCWD and the delivery.
39:34But that hasn't happened yet.
39:37We also had suggested that those people that are there legitimately, not the ones that have moved in, you know,
39:44and sort of, again, squatted on the area or claimed it for some reason.
39:52Pay them a stipend per month to protect a certain area of land that has to be protected.
39:59In other words, if you have a steep slope and it has to have trees on it, you can initially do the restoration work,
40:06but then pay them a monthly stipend in order to protect that land.
40:11Maybe it's one family for 10 hectares or 5 hectares.
40:15And then that fund that you have generated by the water consumption down below is used to pay them to monitor it.
40:23All you have to do is take a motorcycle and go along the roads and the pathways and look to see, is there any damage?
40:31If there is damage, then you go to the person.
40:33Now, when we were working in 1978 for Comstocks, Kruger, Lehmire International was the consultancy firm that did the planning.
40:43They had a common aero system, which is the old Spanish way of doing it.
40:47They hired one family per kilometer.
40:51They supplied the shovel and the pick.
40:54And after every rain, the person was out there filling in the hole.
40:57I could go 60 kilometers an hour from Adlauan to Luceran, any kind of weather, because the road was in very good condition.
41:06You can't do that now.
41:07But use the same system in order to protect swaths of the watershed that need protection.
41:13And then the DNR and the other POMB members can, I think they have, we used to have, in 2016, I think there were five forest guards for 28,000 hectares.
41:26Now, you're not going to protect a whole lot of land with five people in 28,000 hectares.
41:32Yes, Bill, the government have, we are very fond of giving aids, right, to the poorest of the poor.
41:42Like we have the four piece, we have tupad.
41:46So maybe we can convert the tupad to just, you know, street sweeping to maintain a portion of land for, I mean, better convert this to a more realistic.
42:01So that there's also some action that's needed from them instead of just giving them dole outs.
42:07So you've mentioned protection of, and how potentially the, let's call it its name, the squatters can actually be leveraged into this protection.
42:22What exactly, and this is for a layperson like me, what exactly do you mean when you say protection?
42:27Is it reforestation?
42:28Our foundation does not use the term reforestation anymore.
42:35Okay.
42:35And the reason is it has a negative connotation.
42:39Because if you look at the, from what I understand, if you look at the statistics, the Philippines, the entire country, 30 million hectares, has been reforested two and a half times.
42:49If you look at all the money that was spent for the, for the reforestation or the thing.
42:54And you tend to get monocultures.
42:56If you think of Bohisan Dam, you have monocultures of teak, you have monocultures of gemelina, you have mahogany and whatnot, which don't do any good.
43:05They're exotics.
43:05When we talk about restoration, we're talking using a rainforestation type of system where you, you, you would plant maybe 20, 30 species per hectare.
43:18So some are deep rooted, some are shallow rooted.
43:21If you're dealing with a riparian zone, which is along the river, you don't just plant bamboo.
43:29Because if you have a flood like that, all your bamboo is going to end up in the ocean because it's shallow rooted.
43:34So you put in two or three deep rooted trees, then put in a clump of bamboo, two or three trees, and then a clump of bamboo.
43:42You mix the system and you make sure that you don't have structures along it with the thing.
43:48Mother nature takes care of itself.
43:50It will regenerate itself if you let it.
43:53So in some of these areas that may be just protecting it, or what we do, we work with Ayala land in Pumul Subugai.
44:01For their, their, their former area for the, um, their structural, the subdivision that they were going to build.
44:10But, um, in the 65 hectares, we have 110 species of trees.
44:16Many of them are, are not, well, they're native trees that we put in, and we keep enriching it.
44:21So you can, this becomes a, a natural, uh, education area at the same time when you have this type of thing.
44:30So you, we found out here the, when we ran a watershed tour from 1996 to 2013, and we put 75,000 people through that tour.
44:4470% of them were students, but there were 23 sectors.
44:49Nobody could talk about moving a watershed boundary after they went through the tour, because that's set by mother nature.
44:57That's not set by, unless you bulldoze the whole thing.
45:00So people began to realize what it was.
45:03Um, a friend of ours is looking at, um, we're actually reviving that tour.
45:07So that we teach the people in the lowlands, what is really a watershed?
45:13Because you don't see it.
45:14If you, if you live in the city, chances are you don't get above the, uh, over the first ridgeline.
45:20So it doesn't dawn on you where all this is happening.
45:23So, so unless you see it, uh, well, seeing is believing, of course, is the common term.
45:29So, and you need that in order to, for the people down here to understand that they have a responsibility too.
45:36Yes.
45:37It's not just the people in the uplands.
45:40Bill, in, in, in, in our earlier conversation, it's really about not just thinking of the economic things, but on environment.
45:50So, no matter how many flood control projects we're going to install along the river systems,
45:59it will never work until we fix the environmental issues upstream, correct?
46:06Yeah, exactly.
46:08Because that's where it all starts.
46:10And, and.
46:11It doesn't start, it doesn't start in the lowland.
46:13If you have a big storm down here, you know, the water disappears right away.
46:17It starts in the upland and then it washes all the way down here for the thing.
46:22So that's, that's not going to stop.
46:24And what we can do is slow it down.
46:26Yes.
46:27Go ahead.
46:27And this one, and I'm not exactly sure, you know, if you're the person who can answer this,
46:33but I'm just throwing it out there just in case you're among those who can answer this.
46:39For the South Road properties, these are reclaimed lands.
46:44Did, do you have an idea on where these soils actually came from?
46:50Were they outside of Cebu or they were taken inside of Cebu?
46:55Because this is 300 hectares.
46:58Yeah, I know.
46:59I both.
46:59I know some of it came from Naga, if I, if I remember correctly.
47:03Yes, we are right.
47:04And then part of it was from Laetate.
47:09They were barging.
47:10The former governor, part of, I guess, I understand one of her businesses was barging in material for the thing.
47:18You brought up another point that if you look at quarrying, quarrying is one of the problems that they've had.
47:27Illegal quarrying.
47:28You can do quarrying if you're very careful about how you do it.
47:32But there's a lot of, still a lot of illegal sand and gravel collection with the thing in the Mononga River and I'm sure these other rivers that you have.
47:43That has to be curtailed.
47:46And it means, from what people tell me, they said, the people who are doing the illegal sand and gravel collection, the mano mano, not the big dump trucks or whatnot,
47:58they're out there at dusk and dark doing it.
48:04And, of course, your law enforcement tends not to go out there during the dark and whatnot for the thing.
48:09So you have to look at a program of protection that is actually 24 hours in some cases if you're going to stop it.
48:17I think the current governor, Governor Pam Baricuatro, issued a stoppage order to all quarry.
48:26But these are the big quarry operators, not the mano mano.
48:31We know that there are those who are doing the mano mano quarry in the Mananga River.
48:37But I'd like to pursue on the floodplains.
48:42In Mananga River, majority of the houses that were affected were in the floodplains.
48:49Yes, we can see.
48:52So right now, planting a tree is not something like, okay, we plant now, it's good tomorrow.
48:58It takes time.
48:59It takes time.
49:00So it takes time for us to fix what's happening in the upland.
49:04But while government is thinking of fixing that problem, what can be done so that if there's another Tino coming, there will be no more, at least it will not recur the damage to property and loss of lives.
49:23What should be done to the floodplain areas?
49:26Well, right now, I suspect one of your biggest problems is basura.
49:33Yes.
49:34I mean, that's clogged a lot of your drainage ways.
49:38And that, of course, when you clog the drainage way, the water goes over the surface.
49:42So that's one thing.
49:44It's better management of your trash disposal systems.
49:48And, again, it's funny, where we are in Kamputau, we used to segregate our garbage.
49:59You know, you put it in the tin can, the metal and whatnot.
50:04Yeah, we still save.
50:06Nothing organic goes off of our property because I composted for our nursery.
50:10But that's one thing you could do for the wet organic material.
50:15I think they're working on that now.
50:18But the thing is, what happens is that the ones who are doing the segregation are the workers on the garbage truck.
50:25Yeah.
50:26So you give them and they're making money.
50:29So that means they're not being paid enough for what they're doing if they have to sit there and divide it all and try to get information.
50:36So it doesn't do us any good to segregate.
50:38The flooding is really a very complicated problem, not just the trees and the upland, but downstream is the drainage filled with garbage.
50:52Garbage.
50:53Yeah, that's one major thing.
50:55So, yeah, I think you hit on a very important point.
50:58There's no one solution to this.
51:01It's going to be a number.
51:02But the local people have to be educated, okay, what can I do in my house?
51:08Yes.
51:10And then, like, we have seven, well, we have three major containers, barrels that we use for rainwater.
51:18And that I use for my nursery, but you can use it for cleaning the area, for flushing toilets if you need to be with the thing.
51:27There's actually an ordinance that says you're supposed to have rainwater catchments.
51:32But, again, implementation is weak sometimes.
51:37Every subdivision is supposed to have a system of cleaning the water, which they don't.
51:43That's another thing you can look at.
51:45It's not going to be solved in a couple of months, I can tell you that.
51:50It's going to – I listened to the vice governor when I was on the other program the other day.
51:57They have a comprehensive master plan, which is multifaceted.
52:02And so I would have – check into that one.
52:06Because the other thing is that I worked on – with Faye Wallag and some of the others, the master plan for Cebu's water.
52:16And we spent three years writing the thing.
52:19And I was part of the environmental side of it and not the engineering side.
52:24But they have – I think it's 10, 15 or so different sections that deal with bulk carriers and deal with the restoration work and deal with the pricing and whatnot.
52:36As far as I know, they still do not have the implementing rules and regulations.
52:41Three years after.
52:43Yeah.
52:44So this is a problem, too.
52:46You can't implement it if you don't have the – how you're going to do it.
52:49So that's another thing that – it's there.
52:52It's very, very comprehensive.
52:53But that covers the whole island.
52:56It's not just for Metro Cebu.
52:59Yeah.
52:59Flooding is a problem.
53:01Another problem is our dwindling water supply.
53:05But I think the matter on the dwindling water supply will call for another interview with you, Bill.
53:11Okay.
53:13That will be another scheduled interview because that is equally important, our water supply.
53:18And I know you and Ida are one of the advocates, really, for a safe water for Cebu.
53:27But I'm running out of time.
53:30It was a very insightful conversation.
53:34So we hope we can have another time with you to have more insights and maybe call for government for action that, you know, flood control projects are just band aids.
53:47They're not the real solutions.
53:50Yeah, exactly.
53:51And I agree.
53:52It's more of the change of values of people to really better understand what the problem is.
54:00The importance of environmental ethics.
54:04I captured that in the early part of the interview.
54:08So, Bill, thank you for your time.
54:10And thank you, Ida, for chipping into the conversation.
54:15So, it's been my pleasure.
54:19Any time, just let me know.
54:21I'll set my schedule.
54:22Okay.
54:23Thank you very much, Bill.
54:25Okay.
54:25So that's William Grenard of the Soil and Water Conservation Foundation.
54:34You know, they've been there for a while.
54:36And they're very good sources of information.
54:41And scientific, but agreed.
54:44Dugay na gil.
54:45Kaya, maybe it's a master plan.
54:46Mag naghan na kay master plan.
54:48Pero mo na, bisag-unsa ka comprehensive.
54:50Bisag-unsa ka nindot in mong master plan.
54:53Kung wala ag-implement kayang.
54:54Ang executive nga naglingkod, three years na iyang pananaw.
54:58But this master plan.
55:01I think he mentioned 30 years.
55:0330 years.
55:04So, kinahang lang sa siguro i-change.
55:06Sa siguro na ito ang value sa atong officials.
55:09But anyway, that's a long conversation.
55:12And thank you for those who joined the conversation.
55:16Nga, kanag yun, no living.
55:18Si J. Ann Pan, no living in the flood plain.
55:22So, I think makita yun na ito.
55:23Pero mo lagi na.
55:24Nasa yung responsibility ang LGU.
55:26Na, kanapod.
55:28Ang sitting, ang mga sitting executives,
55:30aware basad sila.
55:32Nga kaning flood plain,
55:33dili dapat puhian.
55:34No, kanang mo lagi na.
55:36Complicated pareha sa baha.
55:37Complicated kayo.
55:39But we'll have other time for that.
55:41So, that wraps up this edition of Beyond the Headlines.
55:45We hope today's conversation helped shed light
55:48on the bigger picture behind the story.
55:51We'd like to thank our guest,
55:53Mr. William Grenert,
55:55for helping us connect the dots in ways that matter.
55:58Thank you for being with us today.
56:00I'm Mildred Galarpe.
56:02And I'm DJ Moises.
56:03Thank you and good afternoon.
56:15We'll see you next time.
56:45We'll see you next time.
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