FIRING LINE: Why garbage, not rains, causes floods

By Robert B. Roque, Jr.

I came across a TikTok video last Sunday posted by MC Mobile. I cannot verify its source, or even whether it was original content, but as of my last check it had 73,000 views — and for once, the viral satisfaction was more than watching somebody fall.

The roughly three-minute, sped-up video showed a street with gutter-deep floodwater. Then one man began picking garbage by hand from a blocked drain beside a culvert-canal. He scooped out a few pieces, and almost immediately the water began to disappear into the opening. He kept going, carrying the trash to a bin about 10 meters away. Halfway through, the flood had retreated to barely half the street. By the end, the road was completely clear.

It was a simple demonstration of something we seem to forget: water will find its way out when we don’t block its way.

And it took just one man to prove another point. Somebody has to decide to do something.

That little video came to mind after Monday’s extraordinary rainfall, when 201.7 millimeters fell over Quezon City in five hours. MMDA General Manager Nicolas Torre II said the rate, which is about 40 millimeters an hour, was twice Ondoy’s average rate, with the peak reaching 76 millimeters an hour.

Yet he also pointed to improved drainage in several cities, including Marikina, Malabon and Valenzuela, where floodwaters reportedly receded faster than in previous years. Cleaner waterways, better garbage management and operational pumping stations, he said, helped.

That deserves attention.

Because river cleanup is not cosmetic. When we remove years of accumulated silt and garbage, we restore some of the waterways’ ability to carry water. San Miguel Corporation’s Better Rivers PH, for instance, has removed 116,157 metric tons of waste and silt from 6.1 kilometers of the San Juan River alone in its latest maintenance cleanup and on top of 322,000 tons cleared from the entire 7.6-kilometer river stretch from 2022 to 2024.

That is 438,000 tons of obstruction removed from one river system over several years.

It doesn’t mean dredging can stop floods. It means rivers can do their job better when we stop turning them into garbage bins.

The lesson from that little video is almost embarrassingly simple: garbage becomes floodwater when it blocks the way out.

So keep the drains clear. Keep the canals, esteros, creeks and rivers clean. Government can dredge and pump all it wants, but if we keep throwing our garbage where floodwater needs to pass, we are quite literally helping the water stay.

And sometimes, it takes only one person to start clearing the way.

*         *         *

SHORT BURSTS. For comments or reactions, email firingline@ymail.com or tweet @Side_View via X app (formerly Twitter). Read current and past issues of this column at https://www.thephilbiznews.com