Laguna Lakeshore Road Network feared to cause more frequent flooding

Belen Arevalo, a resident of Barangay Malaban in Biñan, Laguna, is used to flooding in her village whenever the monsoon season comes.

It takes her family 15 to 30 minutes by boat when it’s flooded to get from their house to the dry road for their market runs. In her household, she does most of the errands as her husband is constrained by limited movement after suffering a stroke.

But it wasn’t always like this in Malaban, a lakeshore community facing Laguna de Bay.

“When I moved to Barangay Malaban [in 1986], it used to flood every two years,” Arevalo told Rappler in Filipino. “Then, it became four years until it flooded every year. Now, every six months, we experience flooding.”

Although her family has already built a routine adjusted to the flooding in their area, Arevalo shared her fear that the proposed Laguna Lakeshore Road Network (LLRN) project would further exacerbate what they already go through regularly.

The LLRN, a project of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), is a road network infrastructure facilitating traffic flow from Metro Manila to Laguna. It would go around Laguna de Bay, the largest freshwater lake in the Philippines.

The project’s first phase, which runs along the western coastline of the lake, is a 37.5-kilometer road from Lower Bicutan in Taguig to Calamba. From Tunasan in Muntinlupa up to Calamba, the DPWH plans to build a mixed shoreline viaduct and embankment.

The DPWH’s scoping report in 2020 figured that Arevalo’s village would be indirectly impacted by the LLRN, along with other villages in Biñan such as Dela Paz, Casile, and San Antonio.

Arevalo said they wanted the design changed, fearing they would be confined by the embankment.

“Instead of the water subsiding, it would be trapped,” said Arevalo. “The fisherfolk would have a harder time.”

This is similar to the findings of the project’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) released in May 2024.

“Due to LLRN design, which consists of long viaduct parts, bridges, and embankment, the effects of alignment could influence upon the flood events by hindering the water flow from the landslide to Laguna Lake, and therefore, potentially affect residents living along [the] LLRN alignment,” the EIA said.

Time history analysis in the report attributed flooding to water level rise due to extreme events. With the LLRN project, it showed a 2.06% increase in flooding within 25 years.

However small, this would eventually become a reality for people in Arevalo’s community in about 25 years once the project gets built.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB), which will fund the project through a loan, estimates in its draft resettlement plan that 1,084 families would be affected. Of this figure, 681 families would be physically displaced, while 182 families would be economically displaced, which means they would lose land and assets. About 273 families that own fishery structures or are commercial tenants, employees, or cultivators in the business would also be affected.

Arevalo told Rappler that they were not yet aware of any resettlement plans. 

While the ADB said involuntary resettlement should be avoided if possible, it also said those who would be “unavoidably” displaced should be given compensation before construction and dispossession of assets begin.

In particular, even though some affected people do not have legal rights over land or assets lost, the ADB said they are still entitled to compensation. 

Impact on fishers

There has been a long history of opposition to the project, Rogelio Amarante, a fisherman from Sta. Rosa, Laguna, told Rappler.

“What I know is a lot of fishermen opposed the project,” said Amarante. “Because in Laguna province, the number one livelihood of people near the lake is fishing.”

Around 13,000 fisherfolk benefit from the lake, which produces 80,000 to 90,000 metric tons of fish, according to the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA).

The western part, where the first phase of the road network is designed, is the “most profitable” for capture fisheries and aquaculture.

But through the years, the lake saw a decline in production, prompting Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. to coordinate with the LLDA and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources for regular water quality monitoring.

The DPWH’s 2020 study did recognize this impact, which was why a fishery basin per barangay was recommended. However, this would only reduce the impact since the report said it was “unavoidable” that some fishers be relocated.

“There may be communities that will be displaced,” Maya Quirino, advocacy coordinator of policy think tank Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center, told Rappler in an interview.

Quirino said some people, whose livelihood depends on where they live, cannot afford to be transferred.

“If you’re going to remove them from their areas — and typically, their livelihood is centered around that place — how are they going to earn a living? Those are their two major concerns with the expressway,” Quirino said in a mix of Filipino and English.

Before it became the LLRN, the project was known as the Laguna Lakeshore Expressway Dike under the Aquino administration.

The dike drew criticisms then, particularly from renowned geologist Kelvin Rodolfo, who said an earthquake would be the biggest hazard on the infrastructure.

In 2016, Rodolfo wrote of the dike’s effect on flooding: “If the project is constructed and protects Metro Manila from lake-water floods, people living elsewhere along the lake will suffer, simply because the flood water will have to go somewhere. Reclamation would reduce the size of the lake, so storms would make higher floods than before.”

It also attracted disapproval from fisherfolk group Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya (Pamalakaya) ng Pilipinas and an allied environmental group.

“But we all know that this road project is a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the total conversion of the productive fishing hub of Laguna de Bay into a world-class eco-tourism hub at the cost of socioeconomic lives of the fisherfolk and the lake’s rich aquatic resources,” said Fernando Hicap, Pamalakaya’s chairperson, back in 2017.

Fast forward to July 2024, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Board approved connecting roads and interchanges in the design of the LLRN. It is now slated for completion by 2027.

“The NEDA Board recognizes the significant potential of this project in reducing transportation constraints on existing road networks, promoting economic development in the region, and providing safer, more convenient, and faster travel for road users coming from the north and south to various tourist and business destinations in Laguna and nearby provinces,” said NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.

Meanwhile, the government hopes to finish by the end of 2024 the eastern portion — which traverses Binangonan, Rizal, up to Calamba, Laguna.

There was a series of coordination meetings last July between the local government of Binangonan and the DPWH. Rizal is one of the biggest provinces to be affected by the project, next to Laguna.

While the design has been revised and approved, construction of the road network has yet to start.

For Amarante, in the face of huge infrastructure, there is nothing much to do but hope for the best.

“We can’t do anything anymore,” said Amarante. “But, our only wish is that fisherfolk be given a harbor where we can anchor our boats.”

Reservoirs, roads in the era of climate change

It was on the shore of Laguna de Bay where Jose Rizal “spent many, many hours of [his] childhood.”

The lake had impressed the writer so much that it figured in his two most famous novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

The road network would change the aesthetics of Laguna de Bay, far from how the national hero had once appreciated it back in his time.

Much like other culturally and historically significant bodies of water like the Pasig River and Manila Bay, the lake is slowly dying because of pollution and exploitation.

For the longest time, people have benefitted from the lake as it is used for power generation, irrigation, fisheries, industrial cooling, and as source of potable water. It’s also a reservoir for floodwaters, alleviating inundation in Metro Manila.

As weather events worsen because of the climate crisis, the lake has to be able to retain water. Its watershed area — mostly in Rizal and Laguna — needs to be protected to avoid further sedimentation.

Urbanization remains one of the primary reasons for flooding. History has stood witness to the development spurred in many parts of the country by road and transport infrastructure.

And with a road network as extensive as the LLRN, it only takes little imagination to see the effects on lakeshore communities.

“We’re not opposed to progress,” said Arevalo.

“The problem is, those living near the lake were not consulted. If what they say about the exacerbated effects of climate change will soon come, then we don’t know what will happen to us.” – Rappler.com

This story is produced with support from DW Akademie and the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists.

*Quotes translated to English for brevity.