Ramon‘s Ark
Of all places, you picked Bulacan. Where the first question was about the water. Before your airport, that low land gave some of that water somewhere to go.
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Of all places, you picked Bulacan. Where the first question was about the water. Before your airport, that low land gave some of that water somewhere to go.
Bulacan flooded. Ramon Ang checked his property and found no problem with Ramon Ang.
The water around his airport. See? Not high. His airport is fine.
It should be. That’s the plan. They raised the damn thing. Airport high, but how’s Bulacan doing? Have you tried turning into an airport?
You would not call the man a good neighbor. You’d call him something else. Probably in Tagalog.
Ramon! Of all places, you picked Bulacan. Where the first question was about the water. Before your airport, that low land gave some of that water somewhere to go.
Then you raised and developed roughly 1,700 hectares of it. That’s 17 square kilometers.
Concrete does not absorb rain, Ramon. It is famously bad at this.
You say you have drains. You dredged the rivers. Fine. Did all that really replace what the land used to do before you altered it?
And why do you sound like once the water leaves your property, it is somebody else’s problem?
Ramon. Nobody is attacking you. We’re just introducing present Ramon to past Ramon. Because you told Bulacan you’d help with the floods. Remember?
It was part of the pitch. Make Bulacan great! A world-class airport! Jobs! Economic boom! And, don’t worry, Bulacan. We’ll help with the floods, too!
When you needed people to believe in this gigantic project, Bulacan mattered.
And once people believed, the airport was never going to stay just an airport. Please. Give an airport a runway and pretty soon it wants a city.
Land nobody wanted because it flooded? Boom! Prime real estate. Bulacan Aerocity. Very posh.
Hotels will come because there’s an airport. Then a condo, because there is a hotel. Then another condo because there’s still some bare grass.
Soon thousands of families shall have bought homes there. Their jobs are there. Their children will go to school there. Banks have mortgages there. Government will collect taxes there.
Now try saying that we probably shouldn’t have built there. You can’t! Too many voters and too much money. Enjoy your reelection.
So when the water comes, government has to protect what everybody built. Billions in flood control. Private money made the land valuable. Public money now has to keep it dry.
And you’d have Gov. Daniel Fernando on top of it? Ask him about the P41-billion flood control in Bulacan, and he’d say, “I don’t know.”
Very comforting governor to have while everybody is preparing to build the future of Bulacan.
“Gov, are we absolutely sure we should be putting all this in places that flood?”
“I don’t know.”
Beautiful.
Years later, when somebody’s living room fills with water, they will tell him he should have known better than to buy there.
Known better!? Billboard said 15 minutes from NMIA! Everybody sold you the future. Then they blamed you for buying it.
The tragedy is not that no one knew it flooded. Everybody knew but found a more profitable word for the land.
The developers will say they have a solution. Big drains. Everybody studying the flood. Fantastic. Nobody apparently studied the possibility of not building there.
Everybody can say, “Our property won’t flood.” Condo will stay dry. The mall. Everybody celebrates. Then the old neighborhood gets everybody’s combined “solution.”
We worry whenever Ramon Ang is called a nation-builder. Nation is a very convenient word. Build an airport because you want an airport, and people can question you.
Call it nation-building? Now questioning you sounds like questioning the Philippines itself. Very clever.
Suddenly your business is our destiny. Your profit is our progress. Your success is our success.
And if somebody asks, “Wait. Should we really build this here?”
What an awful little man. Against jobs. Against growth. Against progress. Practically against the flag.
The phrase makes private ambition sound like public service and self-interest, sacrifice.
One day RSA will look out the window and say, “Look at all the growth I brought!”
Then the city floods.
“What city? It’s just an airport.”
