The Perennial Problem of Siltation: Northern and Central Luzon et al, Philippines

Among many other issues, the problems of killer flash floods, destruction of marine ecosystems such as fish kills, deteriorating marine life, low fish farming harvests, red tide, drought - scarcity of water supply, desertification among too many others are often caused by siltation - in many instances coupled with the unchecked deforestation of highlands from where surface runoff water come in large droves during heavy rain.

Sometimes, as in the case in the Mindoro and Ormoc tragedies in the past were countless people lost their lives, compounding the floods are log and debris stampede.

The stampede part is the most lethal particularly when it occurs at the time when people are asleep and have no defense nor countermeasure to rely upon as their physical safety all of a sudden totally goes south.

SiltationFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

Siltation is the pollution of water by fine particulate terrestrial clastic material, with a particle size dominated by silt or clay. It refers both to the increased concentration of suspended sediments, and to the increased accumulation (temporary or permanent) of fine sediments on bottoms where they are undesirable. Siltation is most often caused by soil erosion or sediment spill. 

Sometimes siltation is called sediment pollution, although that is an undesirable term since it is ambiguous, and can also be used to refer to a chemical contamination of sediments accumulated on the bottom, or pollutants bound to sediment particles. Siltation is the preferred term for being unambigiuous, even if not entirely stringent since it also includes other particle sizes than silt.

In recent time, while natural causes still figure as a factor in siltation, human-caused siltation-sedimentation has been observed to occur in alarming levels. More impending man-made catastrophes are expected in this sense, for which early solutions are required to at least lessen the future impact of societal and individual losses arising from simple siltation. 

In Europe, marine ecosystems are taken seriously.

Tyne Rivers Trust - Proud Guardians of England's Rivers

Siltation and pressures on river habitats

The problem on global scale

The intensification of agricultural activities is a recognised contributory factor to the current rapid rate of soil erosion on a global scale. As well as being a valuable resource, topsoil also contains nutrients which can negatively alter the balance of freshwater ecosystems. Erosion by rivers is a natural process and the presence of sediment of all sizes is necessary to support healthy freshwater ecosystems. When fine sediment is over-supplied it can infill the spaces between river gravels and pebbles and lead to problems such as the loss in interspatial habitat, binding of polluting molecules and the de-oxygenation of the substrate. Siltation in rivers is intrinsically linked to the erosion of topsoil by wind and rain action but accelerated (we use the term ‘aggravated’) by land use and land management practices.

Read more about this article from here

Some Related Readings:

United Nations Sponsored Study on Dams, Siltation (download document in Word format here)

InternationalRivers.org

International Rivers on YouTube

Silenced Rivers: Ecology and Politics of Large Dams

UK HydroCoop

Agro and Farming - Bangladesh Blog

Lindorm Florida USA

Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum - Siltation

In relation to fish farming - or aquaculture the following site is recommended:

Wye and Usk Foundation
Siltation
A Wye tributary smothered by sedimentation
River restoration works helping to trap silt in the bank rather than it damaging gravels
Silt is a granular material derived from soil or rock of a grain size between sand and clay. It may occur as a soil or as suspended sediment in a surface "water body" (Water Framework Directive speak for river, stream, lake or groundwater source). It may also exist as soil deposited on a river or lake bed. Siltation is very bad news for our rivers and many of their inhabitants. With faster run-offs from forestry, increased grazing pressures and, typically, potato, strawberry or maize crops, fine sediment loads on some streams smother the bed and kill off invertebrates and fish eggs, resulting in reduced spawning success or abandonment by fish. The fine sediment loading of our rivers has trebled since 1980 and in the most severely affected streams egg survival has been reduced to 0%. Much of this damage is avoidable and our knowledge is increasing of the whereabouts of vulnerable sites and which land use practices put the rivers at the greatest risk.

Following on from more than a decade of leaflet drops and advisory booklets, the "Catchment Sensitive Farming Initiative" aims to mitigate damage in the most vulnerable catchments such as Lugg, Ithon and Garren but it too has the disadvantage of being only voluntary and has limited funding for remedial work. Cross compliance is built into the current grant scheme, whereby grants may be reduced or removed in the event of bad agricultural practices but it lacks the will for enforcement. 

The Foundation continues to be alert to the damage caused by siltation and fencing out stock remains an absolute priority where it is a problem, as is preventing and repairing erosion. The subsequent restoration of natural widths (i.e. narrower) that result from fencing enable streams to resist more effectively the worst effects of siltation.

To summarise, silt affects aquatic life is in several ways:

·   Spawning gravels become compacted·   Invertebrate types and numbers are reduced·   Acts as a vehicle for certain pesticides and phosphates·   Read more from here

Threats to power sector and preventive measures

The forecast of the international weather watch community for selected parts of Asia is light to heavy rain. For Manila, Philippines and major cities like Cebu, Davao, other parts of the Southeast Asian country, varying forecasts of Tuesday-to-Friday (August 5-8) continuous rains and Wednesday-to-Friday (August 6-8).

PAGASA predicts gale force winds during the same periods mentioned above.

It is inevitable that this will impact once more upon power facilities. If countermeasures are still not being undertaken to buffer the effect of heavy rain and gale force winds brought about by Typhoon Halong (Philippine code Jose), the public may once again anticipate possible power outages in selected areas in the country.

While media reports that the typhoon has weakened over time, it must be noted that storms are invariably finicky and can regain strength at any time. On numerous occasions, typhoons that made landfall in the Philippine area of responsibility (PAR) and exited after some time, gather greater momentum and returns for another landfall in the PAR.

As the forecasts go, there is more rain than powerful, destructive winds that indubitably are the cause of storm surges.

As earlier cautioned on July 13, 2014, necessary steps must be taken to forestall sustaining great but unnecessary damage to power facilities. Thus it is most strongly suggested that, despite the burden of cost, retirable and extremely depreciated installations need to be condemned and replaced. Retrofits and repairs have to be conducted, more so now than ever before.

More efficient and more effective monitoring systems have to be put in place to pinpoint at once all kinds of non-regular performance of components of the distribution system.

Needless to say, the downtime and the cost to the power supplier but most of all the public at large becomes too enormous to bear when stopgaps that are doable are not put in place while there are occasions to do so.

Furthermore, appropriate new technologies for safeguarding the distribution process from tripping or sustaining enormous damage that will surely entail costly repair and rebuilding, ought to be acquired or harnessed to their fullest. More often than not, new methods and technologies form part of the set of stop gaps that power service providers must have to have better staying power.

It is possible that Meralco did not have good pro-active measures, a keenness to acquire or harness new technologies and techniques because it sank into the quagmire of debts amounting to staggering amounts like hundreds of millions to billions of US Dollars. As a result, Meralco today, is 51% owned by PLDT that is run by Mr. Manuel V. Pangilinan that in turn is taking orders from Indonesian and Malaysian investors (Salim Group) that holds the bigger stake in PLDT.

The irony is that, both PLDT and Meralco, are engaged in public services that ideally, should never be in the hands of foreigners as much as humanly possible.

Any enterprise in the power sector that will suffer the same fate as that of the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant (of Tokyo Electric Power Co.) knowing that pro-active measures could have been taken in advance, would be foolish to absorb losses that could really be avoided in the first place. If the public sector is vigilant, such utility corporations should be stripped of their license and permit to operate electric power distribution services and the opportunity needs to be handed over to more competent and qualified service providers.

A collage of images of damaged power utility facilities alone should give a hint as to the urgency of undertaking advanced planning and early countermeasures, particularly in these times of worsening calamities.

July 15-18, 2014 Philippines

Around the rest of the country and in South China (lowermost photo), the impact of Glenda on installations was staggering. (Photo credits: ANC - Yahoo; AvaxNews - Adrian Ayalin; Philippine Daily Inquirer; Straits Times) 

July 19, 2014

Posted under themes:

damage, installations, typhoon #Jose, #Halong, #power utilities, #pro-active
#disaster #Philippines, #Early Countermeasures

Win the 2016 elections

In Indonesia  as in many countries around the world, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) undertakes indepth studies about political campaigns. One significant work of NDI is the Political Campaign Planning Manual shown below (click the image below to download pdf document.)

NDI is based at 455 Massachusetts Ave, NW, 8th Floor, Washington, DC 20001-2621. It has field offices in many countries around the world. See the list of field offices here.

In the Philippines, a number of centers and institutes - both private and public involve themselves in the study of political campaigns and winning in elections.

Due to the highly partisan as well as feudal-patronage system-based politics and political campaigns in the Philippines, the more cerebral and similarly inclined approaches to drawing voters often does not apply in this country.

However, even given the same kind of structure in such countries as Malaysia, Indonesia and many other Asian countries, technologies and techniques in campaigns that do away with unsightly practices like employing guns, goons and gold also have a chance of delivering votes as evidenced by the victory of many unknowns in the stable of aspirants to significant political posts from Councilor, Congressman, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Vice Governor, Governor, among others proves that honest-to-goodness campaigns can also successfully make candidates win.

There is hope that Philippine elections will become better and that with improved performance on the part of the country's security and law enforcement sector, the regulatory agencies and other quarters that help keep the level of vigilance, peace and stability during poll time high, many desirable candidates will attain to positions where they can pursue policies and true reforms in the country.

It is hoped that this will also be true for all the other neighboring states in Asia, and those in Africa, Europe-Eurasia and the Americas, etc.

Pollmodernization.org invites political aspirants for Philippine 2016 and future elections to work with us and ensure ascension - installation to public office.

Technology and knowhow for winning elections will be at your fingertips. We have proven case studies, we will add your win to our portfolio.