Bulacan town builds earth dikes to contain tidal flooding

HAGONOY, Bulacan – The coastal Bulacan town of Hagonoy near the shores of Manila Bay, where tides continue to submerge almost all 26 barangays, has revived old pilapil (earth dikes or earth embankments) as flood walls in inner villages, a technique used by private fishpond owners in the previous decades.

The project was first implemented in Barangay San Sebastian last year, part of efforts to tap traditional engineering technology to reduce high-saline floods brought in throughout the year by Manila Bay tides which have soaked down residences, inundated business and government properties and overwhelmed multiple hectares of fishponds. 

READ: Bulacan under state of calamity due to floods

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The effort was formalized through a municipal council resolution and a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the municipal government and Barangay San Sebastian. It reactivated earth dikes in the inner neighborhoods of San Sebastian to help prevent high tide from devastating the core areas of the communities.

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“These flood-control projects are also nature-based because they are earth dikes largely made of bamboo and revising the old embankments of the town,” Hagonoy Mayor Rosario Sy-Alvarado Mendoza told the Inquirer on Sunday.

Mendoza said people traversing or living near Peralta Street in San Sebastian had never seen dry ground because the tides never end. “Mary the Queen in San Sebastian, the previously posh subdivision in Hagonoy, is always submerged by high tide floods,” she noted. 

According to the mayor, the revived earth dikes will benefit not just San Sebastian but will prevent floods further down the villages of Sto. Nino, San Agustin and San Nicolas.   

Under the MOA, the municipal government will provide all the required materials, while the village leaders and the community members will provide the workforce for the construction. The earth dikes will need huge bamboo which will be installed manually. 

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But Mendoza said Hagonoy’s long-term solution to tidal flooding is the natured-based flood control project in the island Barangay of Pamarawan in the City of Malolos. 

Designed by Dutch firm Royal HaskoningDHV, the Malolos project is touted as the “Philippines’ first implemented nature-based solutions (NbS) coastal protection pilot.” 

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It says the Malolos project “combines bamboo and oyster breakwaters to reduce wave energy, oyster bags to encourage reef and habitat recovery, sediment traps to gradually raise the seabed, and areas for mangrove regeneration (to) form a natural defence system that reduces storm impacts, rebuilds coastal elevation and supports new livelihood opportunities through oyster and fish production.”

It is being put up in a 14-hectare area between Pamarawan and Manila Bay waters and costs P70 million. 

Malolos Mayor Christian Natividad said their NbS project is the product of 16 years of research conducted by Alyansa ng mga BaybayBayan sa Lalawigan ng Bulacan at Pampanga that started in 2010.

Former Hagonoy Mayor Angel Cruz, president of Alyansa, who used to live in The Netherlands, brought home the NbS concept. 

According to Natividad, all the coastal communities of Hagonoy, Malolos, Bulakan, Paombong, Obando and Meycauayan in Bulacan, and Macabebe, Sasmuan and Apalit in Pampanga, are members of the Alyansa. 

“I think (NbS) is a must for Hagonoy because the land there is very much depleted. The depletion started in the 1970’s when the mangroves were removed to give way to the expansion of the fishponds which at that time have become highly commercialized. They put up earth dikes but failed to replant mangroves,” the mayor said.  

“When the fishpond industry started to collapse due to the high salinity of Manila Bay waters, they abandoned the earth dikes which allowed tidal waters to penetrate the inner communities,” Natividad said. 

Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon has shown interest in funding the second phase of the Malolos NbS after the agency included the project in its list of national flood-mitigating programs and projects. 

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Also part of the NbS is the massive planting of mangroves between the Manila Bay shoreline and Pamarawan. INQ