Let’s bore a hole through the valley!
Help: A Diversion Canal is Needed!
Mega Dike! Mega Project!
(1st edition, serving like a draft working paper for all netizens who want Comval’s mainland valley to live, not die)
photo by XL Fuentes/FB
photos by Dante Plaza/FB
Where is Comval’s mainland valley heading to after typhoon Pablo?
If by climate change, it becomes a usual path of typhoon?
That the development and growth of small scale is irreversible,
That it has a vast learned army of small miners now 2 decades after the Diwalwal gold rush,
That the valley’s larger eastern region is tried and tested a highly mineralized region,
That stopping the small-scale mining now is a best recipe for insurrection,
That its northern, eastern and southern upland borders, that have 2nd-growth forests have been subjected to decades of kaingin, poaching, lumbering, logging apart from logging to support gold tunneling, can no longer hold enough the fallen rain water they take,
That these result to fast cascading of rainwaters, silted rivers apart that the grown-up small scale mining has been disgorging soil wastes, mud through the decades,
That its western part has propensity for cash crop production, while also being subjected to clearing and logging,
That for more than a decade now, during continuous rains, waters from the valley’s silted rivers and tributaries exit largely to Agusan river, but for umpteenth times during the past floods, backflows occur and backwater came to meet cascading rainwaters from the valley’s exploited uplands, forming a flood that usually submerged parts of Monkayo, Montevista, Nabunturan,Compostela and New Bataan,
That often it would take a week or 2 weeks’ time before floodwaters would drain to silted Agusan River sans the rains,
That this flooding problem in Comval’s mainland valley has been here for about a decade already, and each flood incident occurs, it becomes more destructive, the toll and damage more higher, the number of fatality is increasing,
That continuous rains, heavy downpours brought the valley’s flooding,
That the Big Flood is yet to come, that would inundate greatly, including Mawab that has waters draining via Hijo River in the valley’s north, emptying to Davao Gulf,
That the case of typhoon Pablo is special, an exemption in fact,
That typhoon Pablo brought heavy rains and strong winds never before experienced by the valley’s population,
That typhoon Pablo was a fortuitous event, a force majeure, with its strongest winds and heavy rains in its eyewall unfortunately hitting the valley that looks like a stretched pan-like figure with bloated parts inside it for the smaller hills and mountains,
That New Bataan was hit the hardest and was just ill-fated to be passed by the eyewall of a perfect storm that the valley’s people had first experienced in their lifetime,
That New Bataan poblacion sits in a lowland is surrounded by rivers and tributaries running from its proximate, high eastern mountains, and the town center is in fact cut by a river,
That Pablo’s heavy rains, and strong winds traveling west in direction, counter clockwise in movement, pounded on the high eastern border or the western border of Davao Oriental, and there high volume of rainwaters landed in the chain of mountains of Manurigao, Mandayar, Katalogan, as though they were tilted roofs; and the rainwaters, not so much held by a spoiled 2nd-growth forest, searched rivers and tributaries and cascaded so fast downhill, overflowing the bigger Andap, Mayo and Batoto rivers of New Bataan, while the Agusan- Manat Rivers in the town’s west also overflowed and also a heavy volume of its water crept into New Bataan, badly submerging the poblacion, drowning and missing a lot of its people,
That the character of the water runoff from the high mountains of the valley was just shown to the max by typhoon Pablo,
That this shows the way how flooding comes to the valley every year especially during the rainy season, thus becoming a perennial problem that worsens and becomes more destructive for each passing year,
Where do we go from here now after Pablo?
Let’s bore a hole through the mainland valley!
A Diversion Canal going south, passing the Hijo River, emptying into Davao Gulf is what I have in mind.
It’s a long, big man-made canal which would divert the floodwaters trapped in the valley during continuous rains on rainy season, or as brought or triggered by a typhoon.
It can be multiple-use canal system, a flood-draining, an irrigation and transportation canal for Comval’s mainland valley to survive, live and not die by Big Floods.
It’s a Mega Dike, a Mega Project that should be entertained by the government
NOW, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!
(N.B.: Yuletide Season sometimes gives us time to reflect and analyze- to help)
– Cha Monforte 1/4/2013
CHA MONFORTE REPORTING 