Flood control back in spotlight as Manila goes underwater

MANILA, 20 AUGUST 2026 —

Manila streets turned to rivers as monsoon rains swelled España Boulevard to chest-deep levels on Monday, sending pedestrians wading past bobbing refrigerators and motorists steering sedans through submerged lanes.

At the same time, lawmakers at a House budget hearing inched toward a confrontation with the Department of Public Works and Highways over a proposed P107.4-billion flood-control allocation for the 2027 national budget. The figure reverses cuts imposed after a corruption scandal in which prosecutors accused politicians and contractors of siphoning billions of pesos from public-works funds.

“Not to belittle the amount involved, but the fundamental flaw in the government’s flood-control approach is that it is ad hoc and reactive,” said Michael Henry Ll. Yusingco, senior research fellow at the Ateneo Policy Center. “It is not anchored on scientific grounds. Clearly, there is no long-term view in crafting programmes to address flooding.”

Flooding spread across Metro Manila. The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority reported several inches of standing water on Roxas Boulevard, waist-deep levels on G. Araneta Avenue and Ma. Clara Street in Quezon City that halted light vehicles, and inundation in Valenzuela, Las Piñas and Parañaque.

The southwest monsoon—not a single failed structure—delivered the downpour, yet the disruption highlights why flood control remains a perennial public-investment concern in a metropolis where roads, homes, businesses and transport networks sit cheek-by-jowl.

Former Budget and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Romulo L. Neri, citing the 2012 Flood Management Master Plan for Metro Manila prepared with World Bank support, said elected officials and district engineers had repeatedly ignored engineering studies when choosing projects.

“The government should follow the studies already done instead of letting politicians in cahoots with the DPWH decide,” he said via Viber.

Yusingco said today’s measures were designed for the scale of flooding years ago.

“Obviously, the situation is very different now, and inundation will likely get worse,” he said. “The government’s approach must address both the now and the future. But our current political leaders lack the foresight to see the problem this way.”

President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. acknowledged the issue during a visit to flood-hit Las Piñas City last week. He said dredging and drainage clearing had eased flooding there compared with prior years, yet more work was needed; he ordered a review of the long-delayed Las Piñas spillway.

Dennis C. Coronacion, chairman of the Political Science department at the University of Santo Tomas, argued that rehabilitation, dredging and rigorous maintenance of existing systems deliver faster relief than new monuments.

“While new, large-scale engineering projects sound impressive, they become expensive monument projects if the baseline drainage systems we already have are blocked, neglected, and failing,” he said via Messenger.

The proposed 2027 allocation therefore raises a structural question: how does the government define flood-control spending, and how will it measure whether projects actually cut risk?

Party-list Rep. Antonio L. Tinio questioned the size and distribution of the proposed budget and warned that changes during congressional deliberations could invite insertions.

Budget Acting Secretary Kim Robert C. de Leon defended the figures, telling the hearing that the Department of Budget and Management based them on its assessment of actual project requirements.

“The P107.4-billion flood-control budget is fully justified as an engineering necessity, but completely unjustified if treated as a political cash cow,” Coronacion replied. “Because of our chronic flood problems, we cannot afford to defund our flood defences. Instead of removing or cutting the budget, the government must guarantee every single peso goes into real concrete infrastructure and not to the pockets of corrupt politicians and DPWH officials.”

He said the state often spends through fragmented projects—millions repeatedly repairing the same riverbanks after each monsoon season and financing small-scale schemes that serve narrow political interests.

“We need a master plan, not band-aid solutions,” he said. “Instead of funding isolated projects that merely push floodwaters from one town to the next, we must fund a single, synchronized flood-control system.”

Transparency, Coronacion added, means publishing not only the headline figure but the full project pipeline: why a site was chosen, what flood problem it targets, how much it costs, who will build it, when it should finish and whether it works.

For residents wading to work through chest-deep water, the test of any budget is immediate: can they get home, can shops reopen, can schools function and can houses stay dry?

The House now faces twin pressures: restore flood-control investment after a period of reduced spending, and satisfy demands for cleaner, more accountable infrastructure programmes. The P107.4-billion allocation under the DPWH for 2027 is likely to face close scrutiny when Congress resumes deliberations.

Related: Manila