A visiting environmentalist and river restoration expert has encouraged students, public school teachers and barangay captains of Manjuyod town to work together in restoring the Manjuyod River.
Dennis Welter, a native of Olympia, Washington, who does river and landslide restoration work in the US through the US Fish and Wildlife Service, said there is nothing that can be done to stop the floods brought about by a storm as strong as Sendong or Ondoy.
He said that in the event of a flood or a storm, the best thing we can do is to ensure that the people, especially those living along the riverbanks, are safe.
“We are wasting money by going out to try to engineer ways to divert the river,” he told his audience at the Manjuyod convention hall last Thursday.
Welter was in the Philippines upon the invitation of Foundation University to look at the river systems in the province and to come up with recommendations on how to go about restoring them.
Welter said that there may be some instances where building dikes or resorting to dredging can have a positive effect, “but they are not a ‘broad brush’ application that should be applied to the entire river.”
He said introducing unnatural structures in the river disrupts the whole life cycle of the river. “There are natural and less-effective solutions that can be done.”
Welter’s visit to Manjuyod was arranged by former Governor Jose Baldado, now the municipal administrator. Baldado and Welter first met four years ago and he was convinced of Welter’s plan to restore the Manjuyod River.
Welter, meanwhile, said he agreed to go to Manjuyod to speak before the teachers, barangay captains and students because Baldado is the only politician he had talked to who seemed convinced that there was a problem and that something had to be done to reverse it.
