Drainage to Parongking River will Solve Calasiao’s Flooding – DPWH

  By Mortz C. Ortigoza

CALASIAO, Pangasinan - The recent construction of another drainage outlet that will egress to Parongking River will mitigate if not solve the perennial flooding of the poblacion area.

“Meron project diyan para tuluyan maalis ang baha diyan sa BIR hanggang sa Paronking River para siyang drainage outlet nag start ng construction this September last week,” said by 4th District Engineering Office's District Engineer Simplicio D. Gonzales of the Department of Public Works & Highway.

FLOODED image of the entrance of the gate of the regional office of the Bureau of Internal Revenue in Calasiao, Pangasinan whenever downpour hit the town. Personnel of the tax office use a makeshift bridge so its clients' feet would not get wet.

 Gonzales was asked by this newspaper why the entrance of the regional office of the Bureau of Internal Revenue easily get drowned with water whenever downpour or typhoon comes in the town.

A photo taken by this newspaper showed a makeshift bridge has been used again at the gate as bridge by the tax office’s personnel so its clients could transact their business there.

In August 2019 a bench used as makeshift bridge had been used to usher the clients of the tax office after a typhoon scourged this town.

The guard in the BIR told this writer that a pregnant lady fell down from the wooden bench when she slipped from it.

Gonzales could not say in an earlier interview the appropriation for the second drainage system going to Parongking River.

The flooding in the mentioned areas have been blamed since year 2017 to the defective concrete canal of the DPWH. Its reconstruction cost the national government P13 million.

The appropriation, Gonzales stressed, went to the creation of the drainage that stretches from the cockpit arena here to the BIR, Chowking, Jollibee, and to the Datuin Machine Shop.

The drowning of the area started when the owner of a land where a creek is located at the Judge Jose de Venecia Highway back filled it that impeded the flow of the drainage water that runs to the Banaoang River.

The problem was aggravated because of the bad engineering started by the predecessor of Gonzales as the concrete canal was not tilting to the exit in the Banaoang River. Part of the P13 million budget, he explained, was its reconstruction.

In the national 2021 budget, he proposed to construct another egress of the water from the same drainage system that will exit at the Parongking River.