BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan ordered the City |Engineering Office and the Department of Public Works and Highways–Baguio City District Engineering Office (DPWH-BCDEO) to clear all the city’s drainage system to prevent flooding around the city during the rainy season.
The city mayor said concerned personnel must start removing debris that clogs the various drainage system to ensure the uninterrupted flow of water to the said systems to avoid inconvenience to the public, especially during the rainy season.
“We have to remember that Baguio City receives the most amount of rain during the wet season that is why concerned government agencies and city departments must ensure that our drainage systems are working to prevent flooding around the city that will inconvenience the public,” Domogan stressed.
He also directed the concerned offices to check on leaks in the drainage systems to avoid leaks in such infrastructures and prevent the immense damage like what happened in the sudden erosion of a huge portion of Gibraltar road.
According to him, a primary cause of the erosion of a portion of Gibraltar road is the improper sealing of the drainage system constructed by the DPWH-BCDEO that allowed water to freely flow into the city’s sewer system but also scoured the riprap project causing it to suddenly collapse.
On the other hand, he called on residents and business owners to stop using the drainage systems as their waste disposal site as this unnecessary debris impedes the smooth flow of water to the drainage system making it difficult for concerned personnel to clear the systems.
With the declaration by the country’s weather bureau that it is already the rainy season, he claimed the concerned government agencies and city departments must fastrack their drainage clearing operations to make sure that the manholes are appropriately covered to prevent residents and business owners from wilfully dumping their wastes into the city’s system that will result to floodings during heavy downpour.
Further, he added corrective measures must be made in the drainage systems by concerned government agencies and the city departments so that the facilities will not be directly connected to the city’s sewer systems, potentially causing more problems than solutions to the city’s flooding concerns in the future.
He also appealed to residents and visitors not to dump their waste in the canals during heavy downpours because they contribute to the clogging of the major drainage systems resulting in flooding in their areas, thus, the garbage that they dumped downstream will surely go back to them, saying that the public must strictly adhere to the proper disposal of their household waste.
By Dexter A. See
