Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte from the Bicol Region pushed for the enactment of a bill creating the Sustainable Bicol River Development Authority (SBRDA) to address the chronic flooding and other problems besetting the Bicol River.
Villafuerte appealed to fellow legislators to support the bill’s passage following President Marcos’ directive on the possible revival of a discontinued agency to put an end to the perennial flooding of the Bicol River that led to record devastation in the region due to ‘Kristine.’
The enactment of HB 1793 “is timely, in the wake of President Marcos’ order for the DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways) to review the revival of the BRBDP as the long-term solution to the chronic flooding of the Bicol River, which caused worse-than-expected devastation in CamSur and the rest of the region when Kristine dumped record rainfall last month that was a lot worse than what typhoon ‘Ondoy’ unleashed in 2009,” said Villafuerte.
After his post-“Kristine” inspection trip to CamSur last Oct. 26, the President traced the unprecedented havoc inflicted on hardest-hit CamSur to the perennial flooding of the Bicol River, and ordered the DPWH to “revisit” the BRBDP as a long-term flood-mitigation solution.
The BRBDP refers to the defunct Bicol River Basin Development Program that the President’s late father—former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.—established in 1973. Created five decades ago by the late President, via Executive Order (EO) No. 412, to take charge of developing this river system that is the 8th biggest in the country, this BRBDP was shelved, though, when the then-Aquino government took over in 1986.
