Inundated

A few days ago, we were told to prepare for a possibly crippling drought. Today, after two storms skirted Luzon, the very same areas identified as prone to drought are completely inundated. Many roads in Metro Manila and nearby Bulacan province are rendered impassable by floods.

The immediate peril is the need to release water from the overflowing dams nearby. The Ipo Dam in Norzagaray has exceeded its maximum holding capacity. The La Mesa Dam in Quezon City is nearing its spilling level. When it begins releasing water, this will swell the Tullahan River and cause flooding in Valenzuela and Malabon.

The abundance of water is deceptive. If the rains stop, we could return to water rationing within weeks. The El Nino weather phenomenon is unusually severe this year and next. The episodes of drought will likely outlast the episodes of heavy rain. Severe weather caused by climate change includes both severe rain and long droughts.

The present situation where our dams are dry one week and overfilled the next will likely become the usual pattern. The UN Secretary-General declared last week that we have moved beyond global warming and entered into “global boiling.” This is most evident off the coast of Florida where seawater approximates the temperature of a hot tub.

This year, the South Pole did not build ice as it usually does every year during the winter months in the southern hemisphere. In Siberia, melting permafrost resulted in the discovery of 46,000-year-old worms that revived with just a splash of water. Imagine what other organisms might be revived as the permafrost melts. This might include Jurassic viruses.

The El Niño phenomenon is caused by warm ocean currents. With global warming, this phenomenon could become protracted episodes.

In the North Atlantic, the system of water currents that regulate weather patterns and moderate the salinity of the ocean is threatened with collapse. Science has yet to fully understand the implications of this collapse on weather across continents and on the survival of ocean life.

Coral reefs in many areas are bleaching because of rising sea temperatures. When the corals die, a whole chain of adverse events happen. Fish would have no place to breed. Smaller organisms on which fishes feed would deplete. Our marine sources of food will be greatly reduced.

For us here in Luzon, the succession of excessive rainfall and longer droughts is bad news for our already fragile agriculture. Flooding and dryness in succession spells lower farm output and more expensive food for our people.

Already, President Marcos has ordered importation of rice from India to build our buffer stock in anticipation of a long El Niño episode. The order came after India restricted rice exportation in anticipation of food shortages – especially as Russia has taken to bombing Ukraine’s food silos to prevent the country from exporting. If Ukraine is unable to export its grains, there will be food shortages in many parts of the world.

Somehow, over the years, we always assumed there will be grains available for us to buy whenever we face shortages. That is no longer true. Our traditional sources of rice are restricting what they export to ensure supplies at home. The margin of tradable rice has always been thin to begin with. Now it is even thinner. Our diplomacy will be exercised trying to secure rice supplies in a thinning market.

There is one insight we draw from the rapidly changing situation in our dams. Built many decades ago, our existing dams are too small to service the needs of a substantially larger population. They fill up and then dry up too quickly. We need a volume of stored water much larger than what our existing reservoirs could deliver.

Building dams and other impoundment infra are not politically sexy things. But someone with a much longer view of the situation should be fretting about them.

For years, we have talked about setting up a separate government agency, possibly a full-fledged department, to look after everything concerning our water supply. We have tended to think of its scope of work mainly in terms of ensuring the availability of potable water for our people.

In actuality, the envisioned water agency’s scope of responsibilities must be broader. It includes: overseeing the integrity of our watershed areas, the construction of water impoundment facilities to support our irrigation needs during the dry months, the regulation of land use affecting our catch basins and streams and the enforcement of existing regulations regarding the provision of cisterns to capture rainwater.

We all know that the Marikina River overflows quickly because of the degradation of its watershed areas. We do not know exactly who is responsible for repairing the watershed.

A large aquifer was supposed to be built under the UST campus. It was touted as the solution to the flooding of areas around the campus. Has it?

We are notorious for lacking respect for the commons. For this reason, streams and creeks and catch basins are so flagrantly stolen and built over. How many creeks have disappeared in the Metro Manila area alone? Who is responsible for recovering them?

The more we think about it, the wider the scope of responsibilities the envisioned Department of Water should be. It will take over some regulatory functions from the DENR, the DPWH and the existing regulatory boards.

It will have to be an empowered agency, looking after matters ranging from irrigation to flood control. In a word, everything that has to do with water security.