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MANILA, Philippines — One clear diagnosis from this year’s corruption scandal is the lack of science in planning and designing flood control projects, harming communities instead of protecting them during typhoons.
Congressional hearings on anomalous flood control projects revealed a harsh truth: despite receiving P545 billion over the past three years, these projects were only used as a racketeering scheme.
“We discovered that the cause of the problems we face on flood control projects is a lack of proper planning,” Vince Dizon, secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), said in October.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) cited some examples during a Senate budget hearing in October: a dike in Davao de Oro constricting the river, two uncoordinated dikes in Tarlac that merely transferred the flood risk from one area to another and a flood work along Laguna de Bay that turned out to be a reclamation project.
“The poorly situated projects, in my personal opinion, are more important, even compared to the ghost projects that we have been investigating,” DENR Undersecretary Carlo Primo David said.
“Every time we constrict, block, divert or alter natural waterways, we change the velocity and volume of water flow,” he added.
Renato Solidum Jr., secretary of the Department of Science and Technology, said the DOST has no communication with the DPWH regarding national projects.
“Based on my experience as director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, if projects emanated from the Japan International Cooperation Agency – foreign projects – the DOST was involved, or at least Phivolcs and PAGASA (Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration) were. We’re part of the steering committee,” Solidum told The STAR.
“For domestic projects, none,” he noted.
District engineering offices might have gotten rainfall data from PAGASA for local projects, he said.
Most existing flood control projects are only capable of handling floods with a 25-year return period, even though recent cyclones battering the country have caused floods with a 100-year return period.
“When you design it that way, at some point, (the projects) cannot accommodate all the rain and the rivers get silted and become shallow,” Solidum explained.
“Once you urbanize slopes, the infiltration capacity of a river diminishes. So, the runoff – the water flowing directly into the slope, canal and river – will be much higher. The rate at which the river will be filled up is faster than usual,” he added.
Multi-disciplinary
Local government units (LGUs) should adopt an integrated flood management approach that considers water flow across the entire watershed, Solidum said.
A multi-disciplinary strategy, he said, would involve fields like hydraulics to improve water storage when existing drainage systems reach capacity.
Building dikes in mountains is an example of over reliance on grey infrastructure.
Mahar Lagmay, executive director of the University of the Philippines Resilience Institute (UPRI), said it only worsened flooding.
“What does a dike do? Doesn’t it speed up the flow of water? If you cement the sides, there’s less absorption of water,” Lagmay told The STAR.
“If you build a dike without…understanding the problem, water will flow into low-lying areas. And if that happens, the flood will be higher,” he explained.
The DPWH has scrapped over P250 billion from its proposed 2026 budget earmarked for flood control projects, requesting Congress to reallocate the funds elsewhere.
The cut enabled the bicameral conference committee to allot P1 billion for Project NOAH or Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards, which Lagmay co-founded in 2012.
Lagmay said this funding would support the government’s Oplan Kontra Baha and improve hazard maps by including multiple flooding scenarios.
Oplan Kontra Baha, the government’s newly launched flood mitigation program, is guided by studies from Project NOAH to identify areas outside Metro Manila that also need flood control measures.
Dizon has engaged with Lagmay, David and Guillermo Tabios III from the UP Institute of Civil Engineering to help prepare the DPWH’s 2027 budget, which will begin in earnest come February 2026.
“I told them that I won’t allow any project inserted in the next budget without any plan and not cleared by this group,” Dizon said.
Former public works chief Rogelio Singson, fresh from his resignation as commissioner of the Independent Commission for Infrastructure, will also join the group, eyeing to implement master plans he left in 2016 for the country’s major river basins.
Lagmay believes the Philippines might be better off without funds for local flood control projects, citing a Project NOAH study wherein restoring forest cover in Negros Island to 1990 levels could reduce floodwaters by one million cubic meters, equivalent to 400 Olympic-size swimming pools.
According to Global Forest Watch, Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental lost a combined natural forest spanning 990 hectares, equivalent to 450 kilotons of carbon emissions.
“There are many more: retention basins, detention basins, rainwater harvesting and flow-through dams that are small. They delay the water so it doesn’t arrive at the low-lying areas all at the same time,” Lagmay explained.
Solidum said LGUs can also subscribe to a new automated planning tool developed by the DOST, DENR and Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development, in partnership with the World Bank, to create risk-informed land use and urban development plans.
Aided by artificial intelligence, PlanSmart will streamline time-consuming activities by using data from the three agencies.
With flood control being this year’s defining issue, Lagmay observed something different: more LGUs have coordinated this year with the UPRI to make their long-term flood resilience plans.
“There’s really an uptick,” he said. “Almost every day, there’s a mayor or a governor or a congressman in our office.”
