Great flood of lies

Credit goes to Ferdinand Marcos Sr. for at least thinking like a builder. In the 1970s, his government laid out a three-part scheme that might have solved Metro Manila’s perennial floods: the Napindan Hydraulic Control Structure to regulate the Pasig, the Manggahan Floodway to divert the Marikina River, and the Parañaque Spillway to drain Laguna de Bay into Manila Bay.

The first two were finished — Napindan in 1983 and Manggahan by 1986 (1988, if you believe Japanese funding agency JICA). The third, the Parañaque Spillway, was strangled by “budget constraints” despite padded allocations in 1976. That missing spillway still haunts Metro Manila every monsoon.

The Manggahan Floodway — nine kilometers of engineered concrete waterway — cost P1.5 billion then, about P15–20 billion today. It can haul 2,400 cubic meters per second out of the capital and into Laguna de Bay, now down to 2,000 cms, no thanks to informal settlers and encroachments.

The channel eased Metro Manila’s floods — but, according to some experts, at the expense of Taguig, Taytay, and the lakeshore towns of Laguna and Rizal. Since its construction, residents have claimed they’ve endured longer and deeper inundations.

Now weigh that against Marcos Jr.’s flood-control budgets: P185.8 billion in 2023, P244.6 billion in 2024, P254.3 billion in 2025, and a proposed P272.3 billion in 2026. Add the share of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, and the 2026 total balloons to P346.6 billion, a princely sum that could build over 15 Manggahans annually — never mind their flaws.

Yet, despite the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars being invested in supposed flood control projects, Metro Manila and its surrounding areas still resemble Venice after a single downpour. Because the real flood isn’t water, it’s corruption.

Even Marcos Jr. had to admit it. He flagged a P55.7-million “river wall” in Baliwag, Bulacan — except there’s no wall. Another P56 million project nearby? Also imaginary. Senator Ping Lacson uncovered 30 more, each conveniently priced at P72 million, like they rolled off a ghost-project conveyor belt.

The media tracked billions more: P3.6 billion in Naujan and P807 million in Baco, Oriental Mindoro, funded not once, not twice, but thrice in 2024. Pampanga and La Union, too, have their phantom embankments. When it rains, it pours, as that tired cliche says.

Then came Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong, who revealed that upland “flood-control” projects were nothing more than lowland designs lazily copy-pasted onto mountain terrain. Doomed from the start, but perfect for contractors to skim 30 — 40 percent before the first bag of cement was opened.

This is the story: it’s not that the state lacks funds, but that it loses money into the pockets of thieving lawmakers, government engineers and conniving contractors. The result? Culverts collapse on their own, dikes split at the first storm, embankments crumble before the paint dries.

The Manggahan Floodway showed the government could still deliver something concrete — though not without costs and collateral damage. What we see now shows it prefers theft over delivery. Why build something that lasts when you can make ghosts, collect pork, and leave the wreckage to the next administration?

Every monsoon strips the illusion bare. Politicians in hard hats slosh through the muck, promising “long-term solutions” as water laps at their knees. Then the rains stop, the cameras leave, and the plunder resumes.