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A
long time city resident who used to work at the City Engineer's
Office sent us an e-mail weeks ago about the city's drainage
problem.
There
is no doubt that Manuel Fuderanan who is now based in Bakersfield
City knows whereof he speaks not to mention his propensity
to use the might of his pen to reduce his ideas into writing.
He wrote thus:
"The
news item about the governor's 80 million-peso-aid to our
city's proposed "waste water" treatment facility
for our drainage system jolted me out of my reveries and prodded
me to grudgingly intrude into your domain, once again. That's
quite an amount and the money might as well be used for "really-needed"
projects.
In
the first place, drainage systems do not need treatment facilities.
Drainage water is supposed to be purely surface runoff or
rainwater and along with a separate, independent and functioning
sewage and sewerage disposal system (the system that takes
care of domestic wastes and which needs a waste water treatment
facility), it should be relatively free from domestic waste
contamination. In highly urbanized cities, industrial and
commercial establishments are usually required to screen and
monitor their surface run-off of any seepage of industrial
waste before the drainage water is siphoned and absorbed into
the drainage system.
A
city's infrastructure and disposal systems, (like drainage
system, solid waste disposal system, sewage and sewerage disposal
system, traffic engineering system and road standards, etc.),
although separate and apparently independent with each other
are really interdependent and interact with each other. One
needs a comprehensive approach in the conceptualization and
implementation of any of these systems. The solution to any
particular drainage problem, for example, should not focus
on that specific problematic area alone but for a much wider
tributary area that feeds and nurtures the problem.
Our
City of Tagbilaran is blessed with a topographical configuration
that precludes any need for a more elaborate and complex drainage
structures and mechanisms. Water seeks its own level and in
random places in our city there are natural geological formations
that are ideal for sump locations where the surface runoff
may be temporarily stored after a sudden downpour or thunderstorm
before it percolates to the underground or eventually to the
sea. One such location is the interior area at the corner
of CPG Avenue and the street fronting the College of the Holy
Spirit.
The
issue that might have concerned most city residents is the
perception that the drainage water might eventually pollute
the Tagbilaran Bay. Drainage water percolating through different
layers of earth strata is automatically filtered and freed
from the finer sediments that have managed to elude through
the catch basins and manholes. Where there is a need to shift
surface or open-channel flow into subsurface pipe flow, a
short section of natural filtration chamber may be provided
at the pipe's outflow end before the drainage water reunites
with the sea.
As
a footnote, the City of Bakersfield is as flat as an iron
board. It is a very fast-growing city in California's breadbasket
- the Central Valley. And it is very far from the sea and
lies on the flood plains. A 10- year, 50-year or 100-year
thunderstorm or downpour occurs once in a while, but the whole
city, in a matter of minutes, is bone dry."
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For
comments and suggestions, just e-mail to the following e-mail addresses: obiter@boholchronicle.com | 
