01/09/2026
Marcos’ 1977 proclamation meets 2026 reality: Why the watershed still isn’t safe
"IN the past two weeks, everything has seemed like a blur: residents wading through waist-deep floods, vehicles unable to move, and trash dumped onto the streets. Whenever hard rains strike Metro Manila, we look downstream—to clogged esteros, inadequate drainage, pumping stations, overflowing rivers, and flood-control projects. We keep asking the same question: why can’t the water be drained out faster?
Perhaps we should occasionally look in the other direction. Upstream. Beyond Marikina and Rizal lies a landscape whose value cannot adequately be measured by the limestone, aggregates or other materials that can be extracted from beneath it. The Upper Marikina watershed performs another kind of economic work. It buys time.
A functioning watershed does not make torrential rain disappear. Nor can forests prevent every flood, particularly when extraordinary rainfall falls upon already saturated ground. What forests can do is intercept rainfall, encourage infiltration, increase the roughness of the landscape and slow surface runoff. Water that does not rush immediately downhill is water that arrives downstream later.
Sometimes that interval matters. It is nature’s version of flood-control infrastructure. And that is why what has been happening in parts of Rizal deserves attention far beyond Rizal. The argument over quarrying there has been going on for years. In fact, on April 18, 1977, President Ferdinand E. Marcos issued Proclamation No. 1636, withdrawing specified public lands in Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna and Quezon from sale, settlement, exploration or exploitation and declaring them a National Park, Wildlife Sanctuary and Game Preserve. The language was remarkably clear. Almost half a century later, the problem should have been settled. It wasn’t.
But last April 25,2026, the NBI -Rizal District Office arrested two individuals for quarrying operations in Barangay San Salvador, Baras, Rizal. Two backhoes and a mini-dump truck were seized. But the more disturbing detail came from the government itself. A backhoe is difficult to hide. A quarry is even harder. Earth must be excavated. Heavy equipment must enter. Material must leave. Trucks must travel roads.
Somebody buys what has been removed. Illegal quarrying is therefore unlike many crimes that can be committed behind a closed door. It leaves marks upon the landscape and movements along public roads. And that raises an uncomfortable truth. Who is supposed to be watching?
Gravity has no constituency. And therein lies the larger policy issue. Metro Manila’s flood-control strategy cannot begin only when rainwater has already reached Metro Manila. We build pumping stations to expel water. We deepen waterways to carry it. We construct floodways to divert it. All are necessary.
But upstream forests perform another service before concrete infrastructure ever encounters the water. They slow part of its journey. When extreme rainfall is becoming harder to manage, every functioning layer of protection matters. Drainage matters. River capacity matters. Floodways matter. Early warning matters. And, most of all, the watershed matters.
The recent catastrophe in the Himalayas offers a different but sobering reminder of how events high in a watershed can become disasters far downstream. Nepal’s tragedy reveals that what happens upstream does not necessarily stay upstream. This is why the continuing reports—and now documented law-enforcement action involving unauthorized quarrying in Baras—deserve more than another investigation followed by another press release.
Government should establish publicly where quarrying is presently occurring in the Upper Marikina river system; which operations possess valid permits; which do not; which areas fall within protected landscapes; what happened to the cancelled MPSAs; and what enforcement actions have followed.
Satellite imagery makes changes in mountainsides increasingly difficult to conceal. Government should use it. Publish the maps. Publish the permits, as well as the coordinates, and the inspection reports. Let citizens see whether what exists on paper is what exists on the mountain.
Because this is no longer merely an environmental argument between quarry operators and conservationists. It is a question of risk. More than 13 million people live in Metro Manila. Millions more live in the surrounding provinces. Every rainy season, the government spends enormous sums protecting communities and repairing what floods destroy.
Perhaps we should begin assigning an economic value to the infrastructure that sends no invoice. The mountain. The forest. The watershed. We understand that back In 1977, the government looked at part of this landscape and decided that some places were worth more protected than exploited.
Nearly 50 years later, the rainfall confronting our cities has become more dangerous. And the population waiting downstream has become vastly greater. The old proclamation therefore poses a surprisingly modern question.
If we already know what the watershed protects, why is it still being extracted?"
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IN the past two weeks, everything has seemed like a blur: residents wading through waist-deep floods, vehicles unable to move, and trash dumped onto the streets. Whenever hard rains strike Metro Manila, we look downstream—to clogged esteros, inadequate drainage, pumping stations, overflowing river...
