Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Philippine city facing drainage, flooding woes

Judy Partlow in the Visayan Daily News (Philippines): Dumaguete Mayor Manuel Sagarbarria said the city is facing a big problem with its drainage system that is not designed to accommodate huge amounts of rain, but has put much of the blame on excessive rainfall brought on by climate change.

Sagarbarria also admitted in a recent interview that the city does not have the money to improve or build a better drainage system, in order to avoid a repeat of the massive flooding on June 30, that submerged many parts of the city.

He said one of the biggest problems of the city is that its drainage canals are too small. However, it will cost millions of pesos to revamp its drainage system, he added.

A farmer himself, he is apprehensive over the amount of rainfall in Dumaguete, noting that several years ago, the city only recorded about six or seven inches of rain in a month’s time. Nowadays, the city experiences rainfall of two to three inches within an hour to two hours, due to climate change, he added. He said they can only do the regular de-clogging of these canals, now, and that, since last year, at least 22 people have been mobilized by the city to regularly clean out the drainage canals...

Robinson's Place in Dumaguete, Visayas, the Philippines. Shot by Mike Gonzalez (TheCoffee), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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