Drainage canals and slope retaining walls

Pide, Balugan 

HAPPY WEEKEND 

By Gina Dizon

SAGADA, Mountain Province -- Typhoon Egay unmasked substandard infra projects and caused road cuts and landslides exposing the lack of slope retaining walls and drainage systems. 
    A quick look at the long stretch of soil beside the road leading to southern Balugan of this tourist town points out a landslide happened somewhere debris that blocked the road for quite some time at the height of Egay’s fury.
    Balugan resident Martina Malidom of sitio Pey-asan said the soil came from a landslide up the mountain and surged down Pey-asan falls located near her residence. 
    It took some days for the soil lined up some 300 meters along the stretch of the road to be cleared supervised by Sagada Mayor Felicito Dula.
    Dula is now asking the Provincial government to also clear off the remaining soil from the road classified as provincial.  
Farmers from vegetable producing Balugan are now able to transport their products and residents able to travel outside from the barangay. 
    A few years back, landsides along the road also happened at nearby Sitio Pide which similarly cased traffic to momentarily stop until the soil was moved aside. 
    And so with similar landslides from slopes above the road near Sitio Pey-asan.  A quick look tells landslides above the road are slowly pulling down soil above which may mean another landslide when a strong rain comes.  
    In this southern part of the town, a major landslide below Mt. Pakad and Mt. Ampakaw buried the community in 1936.  Another happened in 1975 and a minor one in 2019 which tells that the mountain above the village apparently need either drainage canals or slope retaining walls. 
    That, aside from talks that Balugan is a sinking place. 
    And so with other affected communities hit with Egay’s fury. 
    Here at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin compound at the Poblacion area, a portion near the church building sank some 10 feet from the surface considering said portion never sank nor eroded before. 
    Geologist Kevin Gaerlan from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau in a recent MGB visit to CSMV asked the situation of the church compound before the church was built. Gaerlan surmised the area that sank and its surrounding environs are composed of backfill materials. 
    MGB findings revealed under the Mission compound is limestone as previously mapped by earlier workers.
    The Mission compound is characterized as moderate landslide and subsidence  susceptible due to karst. 
Roads too sank due to loose soil material backfilled on the supposed road.
    On the access road leading to Barangay Demang from the Ambasing-Dagdag road, the road opening sank nearly a meter wide with the pavement showing no steel bars and the road too having sank a few meters down. 
    To let motorists, pass by and enable vehicles to move construction materials inside the village for those who are building houses including mobility of motorists, the road was temporarily backfilled with soil resulting to immediate restoration of the affected road. 
    Gaerlan said the road area including the areas at both sides of the Demang barangay road starting from the Ambasing-Dagdag road junction is threatened with sink holes.
    A number of sink holes in this municipality abound. 
    We have road pavements that got separated from the rest showing no reinforcement steel bars were installed and that fell off down the slope endangering lives and properties below, near and above the road. 
    A portion at Sitio Engan of Patay Poblacion along the 6-km Ato-Engan- Lamagan-Mobo- Atowanan farm to market road posies danger to passersby and residents below and near the road during strong rains. 
    The Engan section remains impassable to traverse the FMR to the town proper since it was pummeled by Egay.  
    The initial Ato-Engan farm to market road got since 2013 had no slope protection wall along the earlier 1.3  kilometer FMR  financed from the LGU’s P350,000 Bottoms- Up Planning (BuB) fund in 2013 and an additional fund from Cordillera Highland Agricultural Resource Management Project (CHARMP) in 2014,
    After the road was finished landslides occurred which resulted to impassability of the road and not serving its purpose of enabling transport of farmers’ produce to town. 
    The Ato-Engan road was completed with slope protection retaining walls and parapet on to road concreting towards Mobo and Atowanan exiting towards the Sagada-Besao road implemented and funded by the Department of Agriculture- Integrated Natural Resource Management Project (DA-INREMP) with counterpart from the LGU in 2019
The problem is that slope retaining walls below the road was not obviously done which led to the erosion of the cracked road pavement and parapet along the Engan section. 
    Dula said funding the restoration of the road along with slope protection wall below the affected road shall be asked from sources such as the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) or the Department of Agriculture (DA).
    This aside from the fact that the pavement was obviously not followed as to its structural concrete composition as indicated in the program of work but was only made of concrete solution. 
    More on slope protection, Martina Malidom wants to block off the waters and the soil that goes to her house every time there is a landslide that happens at Sitio Pey-asan. If government could only construct a slope retaining wall with parapet she said. This intervention will protect at least four other houses below the road from waters and soil that comes down from the road. 
    Though Malidom said a steel made table used for washing pig intestines was placed below the waterfalls near the road that fell down the culvert under the road along with other rocks which caused the clogging of the big canal. 
    A drainage canal here also at Sitio Dekkan at the Poblacion showed waters ran above the cemented pavement made to cover the canal that carried waste and rain waters from upper Ato towards Dekkan passing under a big culvert under the road towards sitio Dekkan on to Sitio Sayocsoc and on downstream. 
    Some waters then flowed down the basements of houses nearby and affected residents having to sweep off the waste and waters having flowed to their residences. 
    Residents here said there is obvious clogging of the canal of plastic waste, bottles and other wastes having gotten inside the canal. 
    That obviously is an issue of waste management. 
Drainage canals are major proposed projects of barangays to the municipal disaster risk reduction management council (MDRRMC) for their inclusion in annual plans. Lack of budget however hindered these proposed projects from being programmed and implemented. 
    A comprehensive municipal drainage system is a need as noted in one MDRRMC meeting.