Carried by Water Episode 3: “They Said that Cancabato Bay is Already Dead”

Full Transcript

Hey, it’s Mario. We’re doing a little switcheroo. We’re saving our conversation about the Yolanda resettlement experience for a later episode. Instead, today’s episode centers on coastal infrastructure and nature. I won’t say too much, but I’m really excited to share these stories with you all. Okay. Here’s the episode.

(Intro music starts)

From Princeton University’s Blue Lab, this is Carried by Water. I’m Mario Soriano.

In today’s episode, we center our conversation on stories about non-human elements of the Yolanda experience.

We’ll hear about the government’s response in terms of hard coastal infrastructure. We’ll also talk about Yolanda’s impacts on nature, and, vice versa, nature’s role in mitigating the impacts of extreme weather. We’ll then talk about the unseen but critical resource that is groundwater, as well as the threat of seawater intrusion in coastal aquifers.

Episode 3. They said that Cancabato Bay is already dead

Part 1. Concrete adaptation

As we mentioned in a previous episode, the government adopted the mantra, “Build Back Better” in its vision for reconstruction after Haiyan.

We asked Brando Bernadas, Tacloban’s City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Officer, what this phrase meant for him.

Bernadas: One of the evidences of the imposition of Build Back Better: the tide embankment.  These were supervised by the JICA and the DPWH.

JICA stands for the Japan International Cooperation Agency, and DPWH is the Department of Public Works and Highways, a national government agency.

Bernadas: Look at them. It's a big help. The tide embankment, if you visit the tide embankment, we had proven it very effective. Why? Because it was constructed through the standard of build back better. But the problem is how to maintain it. This is constructed along the coastline and you know how seawater can erode this structure. In fact, DPWH just recently told us that they are now about to turn over those projects to the city government for the city government to give a budget for the maintenance of those structures. And we are willing to do it as much as we can afford because we had proven it is a good defense against future devastating waves from the sea.

The tidal embankment is a 4-meter-high concrete wall constructed along the coastline of Leyte Gulf.

Design documents from JICA show that the embankment is meant to protect coastal towns from storm surge events with a 50-year return period. The report states, quote, “Storm surge of lower frequency, as was the case of Yolanda, shall be protected by non-structural measures” end quote. These “non-structural measures” include evacuation planning. (https://openjicareport.jica.go.jp/pdf/12283420_02.pdf)

If you recall from our previous episode, Yolanda has a return period of about a hundred years. One study estimated the return period to be at least 240 years (Kumagai et al., 2016). These numbers are based on statistical probabilities, so the interpretation of a 100 year return period event is, for any given year, that event has a 1-in-100 probability of occurrence. The tidal embankment is designed for events with a 1-in-50 chance of occurrence for any given year.

Construction began in 2016. The embankment was originally planned to run a length of 27.3 km along the towns of Tacloban, Palo, and Tanauan. At the end of October this year, the Philippine News Agency, the government’s official newswire service, reported that the planned embankment has been expanded to span 38.12 km. It also reported DPWH stating that the project was about 59% complete. Costs are estimated at 12.14 billion pesos or 216 million US dollars. (https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1212825)

The project, which has also been dubbed the “Great Wall of Leyte”, has faced opposition from local groups based on a lack of adequate consultation by the DPWH, and unclear government plans on livelihood support for the people who would be displaced. (https://www.calbayogjournal.com/dpwh-s-tide-embankment-project-continuously-opposed; https://www.leytesamardailynews.com/tide-embankment-project-only-at-60-completed/; https://www.change.org/p/president-rodrigo-duterte-stop-the-tide-embankment-project)

The embankment is located 30-meters from the shoreline, so it falls inside the 40-meter No Build Zone, where the government has banned residential structures.

Yee: Actually, the no build zone is demarcated by that embankment, meaning  if the embankment is built, then technically that's the no build zone.  And so in a way the policy is concretized physically.

That’s Dakila Yee. We spoke to him at a coffee shop in downtown Tacloban.

Yee: My name is Dakila Kim Yee. I am a faculty member at the University of the Philippines, Tacloban College. I'm a sociology teacher, but I actually dabble a lot with geography literature. And, I have been, uh, doing research on disasters, disaster recovery after Yolanda.

Dakila grew up in Palo, just south of Tacloban. He was at grad school in Manila when Yolanda hit, but his family was at home.

Yee: They were actually swimming in the storm surge waters. That's somewhat strange for us because our house is very far from the sea, one to two kilometers away, although we are near a river. And so the waves, like, the story of my father is that it climbed up the river tracks. It was life and death situation for my family who was left behind. And that's why it's a bit strange for me also to talk about Yolanda because of the outsider dynamic, cause I wasn't really here.

Dakila told us that the implementation of the No Build Zone policy has been an extended process of renegotiation between people and the government, and between people and their environment.

He said that, unlike what happened in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, where people living in newly designated No Build Zones or Buffer Zones were mandatorily relocated almost immediately in countries like Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Thailand, the experience in Tacloban has been more prolonged.

Yee: Immediately after Yolanda, some people were already anticipating no build zones. At this point, some of the sites have been cleared. But  you know what actually it has taken like from 2013 to 2023, it's really been a long process. People have been renegotiating it on their daily terms. If they can go back, if they can come back. Some employees in the government that I've talked to before said that, well, we know that they are coming back to the no build zones, but we don't want them to lose their livelihood. So they're somewhat also understanding of the situation. I think that the implementation or the renegotiation of the people in the communities somewhat happen on a day-to-day basis. It's really trying to renegotiate: if you know the local barangay captain, if you can get into their good side, you can, or if they can buy you time. "Just let us stay here for a while." So it's really like buying time.

Many of the people living in the no build zones were fisherfolk or people employed in other industries dependent on the sea. They have been or are in the process of being relocated to resettlement housing communities further inland, some about 15 km north of downtown.

Yee: I've interviewed a lot of fishermen. It's not just the fishermen, but also vendors, those who are reliant on the fish trade. They had the same problem: the proximity to the market. Here they can just walk to the market. The cost is really low, but now they're paying 50 to 100 per day. So those are some, some of the daily costs of resettlement.

For a bit of context, the minimum wage for people in the agriculture sector in Leyte is 345 pesos per day, so those transportation costs from resettlement areas can be a significant portion of one’s income.

We’ll talk more about resettlement in a later episode.

Dakila told us that the presence of the tidal embankment, which also functions as a bike and jogging lane, presented a new dynamic in these communities.

Yee: You can go to San Jose, the area near the airport. If this is the embankment, this is where the houses are, the road, the houses, and then their boats are here and then the sea. So they couldn't bring the boat anymore because of the height of the embankment. And so you can see how the people have adapted to the existence of a climate change infrastructure, because it's to stop the storm surge from coming in. But it's actually interesting because they have promoted it as a bike lane. People are jogging there, people go there for beach outings. But also you can see people unloading fish, so you can see it, you can see it there. It's a really interesting dynamic.

We learned of another controversial infrastructure project while we were in Tacloban.

Mangada: It was just stopped. They're going to reclaim the whole area of Cancabato Bay. Some people, especially the young and few academics really put up a good fight in the city council to stop the reclamation. But apparently, because there's already budget, it's going to push through.

That’s Ladylyn Mangada. She’s a political scientist at the University of the Philippines in Tacloban.

Mangada: I think I've been teaching for 30 years or more. As a faculty of, uh, UP, before Yolanda, my research and public service activities were centered on the local politics. It's about elections, it's about the dynasty rule here in our place. But when Haiyan hit us, my research interest was diversified to Haiyan-related issues. So that's the reason why a lot of my activities are related to Haiyan or climate change or restoration, protection of the environment.

Ladylyn is also a survivor of Yolanda’s wrath in Tacloban.

Mangada: It was really very strong. Very, very strong because after the typhoon, I went out of the house. Oh my god, all the trees fell. When I was able to go out and went to look around, that's where I saw the zombie, zombie faced people. People were like zombies, that people were, were just confused, panicked. And I saw the devastation.

Coming back to the present, Ladylyn said that the local government had been promoting reclamation as a development and adaptation strategy.

Mangada: They say that one of the best response to storm surge, to mitigating these things is, uh, reclamation. The first part is they're going to construct the causeway from here to the airport. After that, they're going to reclaim. And they said, that would be the central business district of Tacloban. They're going to put up the big buildings there because they said that Cancabato Bay is already dead, so they're going to reclaim it.

We’ll hear more from Ladylyn in later episodes.

The DPWH describes the causeway as, quote, “The P3.46-Billion project will involve the construction of a 4-lane road embankment measuring a total of 2.56 kilometers, a bridge spanning 180 meters, with the provision of a separate bike lane, installation of concrete canals, sidewalks, and wave deflectors on both sides. The project is expected to offer an improved travel experience that will soon cater motorists opting for a scenic drive, as well as pedestrians who prefer walking, running, and biking. The causeway was designed to withstand disasters and high humidity while also offering protection to nearby communities against erosive tidal movements caused by weather disturbances.” end quote (https://www.dpwh.gov.ph/DPWH/news/28315)

Dakila Yee says that these plans reflect a continuing focus on physical infrastructure in government priorities.

Yee: The initial plan was the coastal no build zones was gonna be a green belt, but of course it could not be implemented. The city continues to prioritize concrete forms of development. So actually, there's a proposed causeway connecting this part of the city to the airport. As you can see, the plans are still really infrastructure driven. There has to be a different way for promoting development. Thinking about development as something that is connected to the generation of risk is still something that is not appreciated. And that is where the next work needs to be done.

Part 2. Mangrove resistance

Mangroves soundscape

We’re at the Paraiso Mangrove Eco-Learning Park Marine and Wildlife Sanctuary, a mangrove forest located in Brgy. 83, Paraiso, along the Cancabato Bay. As you might guess, the village name, Paraiso means paradise.

Roque Regis, or Mano Roque, is telling us about the different types of mangroves in the forest. Rhizophora apiculata. Avicennia rumphiana. Aegiceras corniculatum. And several others.

Roque: This eco-park is around 10 hectares. This is the only area in San Jose with mangroves. This place used to be my playground when I was young. I was born in 1965. I never left Tacloban. It’s beautiful here. But this causeway that they’re building, it’s going to block the flow of the current… If they build that, this place will die.

Mano Roque is part of the cooperative maintaining the eco-park. Joining him during our interview were Mana Milagros and Mana Hilda. Mano and Mana are honorifics for elderly folks in Waray, the local language.

Also with the three of them was the cooperative’s cat, Mingming, who you’ll hear in the background.

Gilda: I am Gilda. I am a widow. I have four children who are all grown up. Perhaps that’s why I became active in our eco park. I needed something to be occupied with. *laughs*

Milagros: I am Milagros. I have nine children. I am also a widow and a founding board member of our cooperative. With my age, I prefer to go here, to the mangroves. It keeps me occupied. Like what my grandchild says, it’s too boring for the elderly to stay at home all the time. I am able to stay active here. Both of us, actually. We seem to be the most active elders here because the others always rest, and I mean always. We even have two other elders who have rested eternally with God. This keeps us active.

The members of the cooperative are residents of Barangay 83, which suffered only 23 casualties from typhoon Yolanda. Gilda and Milagros told us that the mangroves that were there played a key role in that small number of deaths.

Milagros: This mangrove park started after Yolanda. But even before Yolanda, there were already some mangroves here. There were even some houses here. After Yolanda, around 2015, we started to really take care of a particular kind of mangrove found in the area. This mangrove helped our people during the super typhoon. Come to think of it, if it weren’t for this type of mangrove, a lot more people would have died. Because of this mangrove, there were only 23 casualties from our barangay. The cars that got washed away couldn’t pass through. Our mangroves trapped them. That’s why our mangroves are very important to our barangay. We treasure these mangroves.

Mano Roque later took us to the spot where the mangroves trapped a 20-foot container van that was being carried by the incoming storm surge from somewhere across the bay.

Roque: This is what Mana Gilda and Mila were talking about earlier. This is where one twenty-footer container van was trapped by mangroves. There were others too, but this area, we decided not to plant anymore. We just use it as a corridor for boats and floating cottages. We put them inside the forest when there are storms. And we also showcase that a twenty foot container van was trapped here.

Without the mangroves, such large debris would’ve reached their village, potentially killing more people.

The cooperative started as a way to replant the mangroves that were destroyed by Yolanda.

Milagros: After Yolanda, a lot of the mangroves died. Our barangay captain then devised a plan to replant and restore their abundance. We conducted a lot of potting for the seedlings. We were quite small when we started. Most of us came from the barangay. We were around 25 members—health care workers, barangay security personnel, barangay officials, and some caring residents. When we were starting out, a part of our barangay captain’s plan was a nursery for the mangrove seedlings. It’s a beautiful nursery before. Many admired the nursery. Our barangay captain grouped us together and gave us designated areas to create the nurseries. We even had some friendly competitions, which plant was the best, which mangrove was the cleanest, and a lot more. It was such a joy starting out. We started as a smalltime organization. By 2019, people from city hall paid us a visit and advised us to create a cooperative. Our barangay captain liked the idea and now, this is it. We’re a recognized cooperative of the city. How it works now is that the cooperative handles the day-to-day operations, the planting, the taking care of the vicinity, and ensuring the cleanliness of the place. But the actual space and all the other facilities within the area belong to the barangay, barangay eighty-three.

The cooperative was formally established in 2019 with 25 members. Two have since passed away, so their current number is 23. All of the members are volunteers.

Gilda: We operate on a voluntary capacity. We do not have incentives, nothing. We are really in survival mode at the moment.

Milagros: It’s funny come to think of it. We’re beyond our youth yet we’re the most active. *laughs* That’s the situation here. Volunteer. Always volunteer. *laughs* My nephew always says this, “Is there no younger person that takes action?”  *laughs* I always reiterate that I’ve been in 30 years of service, and this is my lifestyle.

We ask them why they continue to volunteer for the mangrove cooperative.

Gilda: It’s really hard. But we do with what we have. We’re already happy even if we just see fishes swimming by the water.

Milagros: Then in the afternoon, birds of different colors visit the mangroves. You see, mangroves are a sanctuary for fish eggs and a nestling place for birds. Before Yolanda, we never saw birds in the mangroves. They may have gone far because little to none was left of the trees. When our plants grew, different kinds of birds arrived.

Gilda: Sometimes, when we lounge around in the afternoon, we can spot several kinds of birds. Even with my sixty-six-year-old eyes, I can still see the abundance of colors of these birds. In the afternoon, the leaves even seem to fly. We take photos of these mundane things to show people that beauty exists in the mangroves. Look at that mangrove arch, we planted that and now look, it’s grown big. It looks like a cave. You see, those little things make us happy.

Mano Roque adds that visiting researchers have also taught them about the role of mangroves in carbon sequestration.

The Paraiso Mangrove Cooperative is part of the Cancabato Collective, which opposes the causeway project and the reclamation of the Cancabato Bay.

Milagros: No build zone areas should have mangroves that serve as natural embankment when there are strong typhoons. Right now, the embankment that the government wants to push for is the causeway project. Our mangroves right now have a life of only five years. Why? Because of the causeway project. We are against the causeway project. Causeways are only okay when they do not occupy the sea. Look at San Juanico Bridge, it does not destroy the natural order of things. Our local government unit plans to fill the sea with land and build a road that connects to the airport. How pitiful for the mangroves.

Roque: The most pitiful is actually the environment. The most affected are us. When you build that thing, people will have no more fish to eat. Our government speaks of climate change when in fact, it should be advocate for climate justice. Where is climate justice there? Cancabato Bay will be filled with land. Where is the justice there? There is no climate justice there. When that area is filled with land, there will be no more cool sea breeze. The air will be dry and hot. Right now, the air is cool because it comes from the sea. People will not benefit from that. The people that will benefit from that are rich businessmen. People from other nations invest in this plan. We will not benefit from that at all. That’s a sickness of the Filipino. Even when your neighbors are in danger, you do not think of them. In other nations, they protect their elders. Their spaces, they protect.

Milagros: If you have friends from other nations that have the capacity to help, please endorse our cooperative. Tell them our story, of the old people from Paraiso Tacloban that take care of these mangroves. Hopefully, they will feel our sincerity and help us. Tell them our story.

A couple of weeks after our team left Tacloban, the city council gave its nod for the causeway project to proceed. The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that the DPWH was given the green light after making design modifications to address concerns about the environmental impacts of the project. (https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1816549/tacloban-council-drops-objection-to-p4-b-causeway-project)

I asked Nobuhito Mori, the professor of coastal engineering we met in Episode 2, to compare mangroves against concrete structures for coastal protection.

Soriano: Could you maybe compare a mangrove versus a more traditional structure, like a sea wall or embankment?

Mori: Yeah, comparing so-called gray and green for us. Gray means a sea wall by made by concrete or soil, and the green means a mangrove forest in this discussion. So gray is more reliable because we know the engineering function like the maximum load can sustain, and how much wave force can reduce by concrete seawall. On the other hand, gray infrastructure is expensive to make. That is a maybe problem, for some developing countries. On the other hand, green is very cheap compared with gray infrastructure. However, we don't know much about engineering function of the green infrastructure. Additionally, a mangrove forest green infrastructure is zero in the beginning. We have to put a mangrove forest from the seed, and we need to wait, 10 to 20 years after the installation of the mangrove. It is also challenging how mangrove forests can be grown in time with increasing engineering function. So, gray is very short, expensive, and one time installation. But green is cheap but need to maintain for a long time and it's also time dependent. So that is a kind of major differences between them. Mangrove is a part of nature-based solution for coastal protection. And I believe it's very useful for developing area especially in East Asia and the Pacific Ocean Islands.

Mori is currently developing guidelines on the engineering functions of mangrove forests in his research. How long, how wide, how dense should mangrove forests be? How can we grow the forest to keep up with rising seas and changing conditions in the future?

Perhaps, local mangrove cooperatives can fill the important role for the long term maintenance required by mangroves to properly serve their coastal protection and other ecological functions.

Part 3. Reef stronghold

We now venture seaward to a different ecosystem on the frontlines.

Soriano: Could you tell us about this room we’re in right now?

Anticamara: Ah, this is a very special room. This is  part of the UP Diliman Invertebrate Museum, which I am curating. And some of the specimens that you're seeing are mostly type specimens of corals found in the world and found in the Philippines, which is the basis for the identification of some of the species of corals that are found throughout the Philippines and the tropics in particular.

That’s Jonathan Anticamara, a marine biologist.

Anticamara: I'm Jonathan Anticamara. I am a professor here at the Institute of Biology in the University of the Philippines, UP Diliman, and I do research mostly on coastal marine ecosystems, in particular coral reefs in the Philippines, looking at fisheries, coral restoration options and assessment of biodiversity, and how we can manage those reef biodiversity in the country.

I ask him how important coral reefs are.

Anticamara: Very important. So in the Philippines, basically the coral reefs are, if they're healthy, they're a secured, stable source of food, income, livelihood for many Filipinos. That's really their importance. But the other thing I think on top of that, most people don't recognize that coral reefs, because they are really sturdy structure and they're on the coast, they actually serve as a protection from surge. So they're the first kind of stronghold when there's a surge. So just like in Typhoon Yolanda, some areas that have extensive reefs were relatively protected from the surge compared to those areas without the reefs. And although of course mangroves also perform the same function, but mangroves are much inshore. So the reefs, because they're relatively away from the coast, they're the first line of defense that are really sturdy in terms of storm surge. That's how important they are.

Jonathan is the lead researcher of the National Reef Survey, a standardized assessment of the status of coral reefs throughout the entire Philippines.

Anticamara: The National Reef Survey was really looking at the diversities of fish, corals and invertebrates that are found in a standardized transect surveyed within a defined municipality, recording what fish species are found in this transect, taking photos, videos, estimating their size, and also taking photos and videos of corals as well as sponges etc., and algae. Yeah, noting basically every living organism that I can that's visible, non-cryptic found within each of those transect. So that's what we did, basically trying to map species where they are in the Philippines and estimate their relative abundance and their sizes.

I asked him to describe this type of work.

Anticamara: For me it was so much fun. Most of these places I drive because I have to bring my scuba gears with me. And luckily many of the places in the Philippines you can actually drive because although we are island nation, most of this island nation are connected by a roll on- roll off  boat. So ships that can take in cars.  So yeah, for me that was fun because it's an adventure. You know, I can really say that I have seen most of the places that I can access in the Philippines and really underwater as well.

It was this role that brought Jonathan to the waters around Eastern Samar, just before Yolanda struck. He said he had no idea the super typhoon was coming.

Anticamara: About three days before Yolanda, I was actually doing a survey of some reefs in Eastern Samar, which is part of that national survey. So that's how I got to be there just before the typhoon. Basically a day, two days before that typhoon. But I was able to escape because I finished my survey just before the typhoon without knowing that a typhoon was actually coming to the area. Cause back then the cell phone signal was very weak. The internet was very weak, so I only realized that there was a typhoon coming on my way when I was driving back to Manila. My mother told me that there's a typhoon going to the area where I was doing a survey. So I got here and the next day is when the typhoon hit Eastern Samar. So basically immediately the next day, the typhoon hit the area where I was just swimming.

This series of events put Jonathan in a unique position to document the impacts of Yolanda on corals. He says there was no doubt in his mind that he needed to return to his study sites as quickly as possible.

Three weeks after the storm, he took the first available commercial flight to Tacloban with just his backpack and snorkeling gear. He worked with a local organization to arrange land transportation from Tacloban to Eastern Samar.

Anticamara: When I landed in Tacloban, the first thing that really impressed me was how bad the damage was, all the roofs were blown off. Many, many houses lost their roof. And some of the buildings that were built by metals. All these metals were crumpled like paper. Cars were kind of like pushed to the side of the wall. And the big ships from the ocean were pushed on land, and they're now on the ground, on the roads. So you can, these are big ships that were carried by the typhoon to the ground. And then there's so many dead, dead animals and dead people. Yeah. And everything was just damaged. Like most of the houses have floors left. So I think, yeah, those are the visual images that really stick in my mind when I go out the airplane and start moving on the ground. The whole Eastern Samar is mostly coconut plantation. It's lost most of its forest cover. So you can see this monotone image of all coconut trees felled by that typhoon. Thousands, thousands of coconut trees fallen from that typhoon. Yeah. So that was intense, I think. Yeah.

Underwater, the picture was also one of damage.

Anticamara: I had some expectations in my mind on what I'm gonna see. I was expecting that I'll see a lot of broken branches cause I know branching corals are relatively fragile. You can easily break them. So that was my main expectation. Indeed, when I was swimming, I saw a lot of broken corals, the branching ones, there are piles and piles of branching corals, but I wasn't expecting that the boulder corals, which  can be large. Most of these  boulder corals are on average the size of our heads, but many of them can be the size of this table. And maybe some of them can be the size of maybe a quarter of this room. I wasn't expecting that many of those boulders will be rolled off. So, underwater is kind of like a mountain somehow, right? Basically portion the mountain, there's a strong slope, and some of these corals are positioned on this slope, right?  They try to anchor themselves in the slope by cementing themselves. But when that typhoon like Yolanda came, actually many of these boulder corals were rolled off on that slope, and now they're all piled up at the deeper end of the, that whatever, the foot of the mountain. I wasn't expecting that they can be removed like that.

Jonathan also told us that he was surprised to see green algae covering the corals when he returned. His hypothesis was that Yolanda caused so much runoff of nutrients from the surrounding farmlands and triggered the algal growth.

The fish communities also changed.

Anticamara: What I noticed after Yolanda is that many of the species that were associated with corals, like butterfly fish for example, and  many of the tiny fish that usually would hide under the branches of the corals totally disappeared. So I think that those fish are sensitive to the corals that were totally damaged and they disappeared. I don't know what happened to them, but all these extensive areas that I swam through, I cannot find this kind of fish. What's left are the fish that would like algae. So the parrot fish seemed to increase in number in areas that have severely damaged corals, but now overtaken by algae. So there was that shift in fish communities as well.

Jonathan noted, though, that Yolanda was likely just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Many of these areas had already been degrading due to other factors like overfishing.

Anticamara: I also would like to point out that, during my survey before Yolanda, many of these areas are already severely depleted by overfishing and destructive fishing. So there were already corals that were extensively bombed using dynamite. So the damages that I saw after Yolanda, sometimes it's difficult to distinguish between the bombed area versus the ones that are damaged by Yolanda. The only indicator I have is that most of them are fresh. The fresh damage mostly covered in green algae and I can still see the parts of the corals like white because they are still freshly broken from the coral. But many of these areas have been extensively damaged also even before Yolanda and too depleted already. Very, very few large fish species were found in this area before Yolanda, so there was already overfishing. So the Yolanda effect is really kind of compounding what already is a degraded and depleted ecosystem. It just aggravate that situation.

Jonathan said that there are ways we can help corals recover. He performed experiments to design a low-cost method to help revive corals by simply re-attaching the broken coral fragments.

Anticamara: The immediate effect of Yolanda was breaking many corals and many of the broken pieces, as I said, were covered with algae, but some are still alive. But because there were so many rubble around them, I think that it wouldn't take very long before they will be dead covered in rubble. So I thought that perhaps in this scenario where you have extensive damage from, let's say, a super typhoon, allowing nature to recover and heal may not be the most effective thing because the rubble just won't allow settlement of baby corals or reattachment of those broken fragments. So I think these are the kind of scenarios where humans would really need to assist an ecosystem, a damaged ecosystem so that it can still support human lives. Cause there's so many people dependent.

Anticamara: So I thought that maybe the easiest low tech and cheap way to do that is simply to reattach coral fragments. So what we did is that we collected some of fragments of many different species and simply reattach them using cable tie and then we track the survival and growth of these reattached fragments of many different species. I did this for about six months and we saw that within that time period there was relatively high survival and also rapid growth rate. For many. There were mortalities, but partial mortality of the colony, not the entire colony dying. But yeah, I think that, if there is a super typhoon, instead of just allowing the reef to die and then just give boats, if we also invest in helping, assisting the reefs survive. Just like we rebuild the houses of the people, we rebuild the house of the fish, then  there'll be fish to catch. And the fish would also have their houses. You know? So that's my take home from that.

Rebuild the houses of the fisherfolk. Rebuild the houses of the fish.

Recovering from a disaster should be more than about humans.

Part 4. Unseen groundwater

From underwater out at sea, we now move back inland. This time, underground.

One thing I should tell you is that my specific expertise is groundwater hydrology. So I was very much intrigued when I saw a paper titled, “Devastation of aquifers from tsunami-like storm surge by Supertyphoon Haiyan.”

The term aquifer refers to soil or rock media where groundwater flows. By groundwater, we’re talking about water underneath our feet, within the spaces of the soil or cracks in rocks. Unless you are literally on a river, lake, or glacier, it’s quite likely that the closest natural body of freshwater to you right now is groundwater.

In the context of the paper I mentioned, aquifers were devastated because seawater contaminated the fresh groundwater.

I spoke to Bayani Cardenas, the lead author of that study, via Zoom.

Cardenas: My name is Bayani Cardenas. I'm a professor teaching hydrology in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

I asked Bayani about the importance of groundwater in the Philippines.

Cardenas: I think it depends where you are. If you go to the major cities, there's obviously pipe water and water distribution systems, and most of those are coming from surface water reservoirs.  But if you go to less developed areas, then everybody has a shallow tube well, and in that case groundwater is the sole source of water used for domestic consumption. I was there in August visiting one small piece of land that my mother has in Quezon. And we still have the tube well there. And that's what we use for washing dishes, taking showers. It's still a shallow tube well that we actually manually pump. And that's still typical in the rural parts of the Philippines.

Bayani was doing research on the natural process of groundwater flowing into the sea when Yolanda struck.

Cardenas: We were looking at how groundwater seeps out from land to sea, what we call submarine groundwater discharge. It's the efflux of water. So I had some familiarity with coastal groundwater already in the Philippines. So as soon as we learned about the storm surge, I was already trying to imagine what might have happened underground, right? Of course, the damage was all above ground damage to life and property, but being a hydrogeologist or groundwater hydrologist, I was already thinking what might have happened when you have seawater going in one to two kilometers inland. I wasn't sure at the time whether that actually had an impact on the water resources, but we went on to learn that, yeah, it made a tremendous negative impact too.

He assembled a team with university colleagues and local partners to figure out Yolanda’s impact underground.

Cardenas: It was, I think, a month or six weeks after the typhoon happened when we went and yeah, it was still a disaster zone. There were still bodies being recovered and buried when we were there. And people were still living within the rubble, essentially. The science is easy, but dealing with that mentally and emotionally is challenging. We didn't know what we were going to see when we got there, and we had zero expectations, really. We were just like, okay, we have our gear, we have the expertise, we'll see what happens.

Bayani said their team spent a lot of time just listening to the stories of the survivors.

Cardenas: We were driving around devastated villages, but everywhere we went it was a disaster zone. So it was a lot of talking to people, understanding what happened. When we got to this village of San Antonio in Samar Island, yeah, we spent a lot of time talking to people,  and they each had stories to tell and in typical Filipino fashion, they were also injecting a sense of humor when they were telling us stories. They would tell us, Oh yeah, you know, I got carried by this flood this far away and, you know, my shorts came off. And people would be laughing. That's very typical, I think, for how the people there cope with adversity. They still handle things with a sense of humor.

He goes on to tell me how they documented the impacts of the storm surge on groundwater in Brgy. San Antonio.

Cardenas: It became clear that the entire village was inundated, which means all their wells were underwater for an hour or so,  at the peak of the surge. Everybody told us, yeah, we could not use our well water because it got salty.  So they had nothing to drink and they said boiling doesn't help. It makes it saltier. There were even stories of people telling us, we tried to make coffee out of it just to get rid of the taste, and they said but it was so salty we couldn't even drink that. So they're like trying to mask the salinity maybe probably putting you know, powdered juice. But they were trying to do things just so they could drink it and it was just too salty. And then that's when it quickly became clear to us, okay, there's something here in terms of a hydrogeologic impact, a groundwater resource impact. And then we decided, we need to sample the wells. Every time we do that, it was first 30 minutes of talking to the owners, having them share their story, and then, gently asking them, do you have a well? Can we sample it? And they would be there during the sampling. Kids would be there. We were like the Pied Piper. All the kids in the village would follow our teams from one house to the next. We had like a posse following us. And you could see people were happy and they're happy to have guests, so to speak, and that people were there studying their village. We sampled something like three dozen wells.  So it was a lot of walking around and collecting samples and then analyzing those. And it was really a tough environment too. It was hot and humid and you're surrounded by destruction. That was the hard part.

Bayani’s team documented an interesting case study, where the submerged water wells ended up becoming shortcuts for seawater to infiltrate into the aquifer.

Cardenas: What happened in the place we were studying is the water in the wells got salty instantaneously, which was a mystery to us. Because physics would tell you from a natural infiltration that can't happen. And it turns out, the wells were the injectors too. These wells that people were using were basically open tubes underwater that allowed the seawater to infiltrate through them. And all these things leak. They're old and rusty. They don't have good vacuums. They're basically open pipes. So when there was, you know, 27, 28 feet of water above it, above all these wells, they were injecting water. The wells were open pathways for water to come in.

Their team first documented San Antonio’s groundwater contamination in January 2014. When they visited in July 2014, water had almost returned back to being potable. Contamination happened quickly, and also resolved within a few months.

Cardenas:  It happened quickly, it happened overnight, instantaneously. But it also dissipated quickly. I think after the first trip, I think we went every three to three months. By our third trip, it was mostly back to background levels. So this unnatural contamination because it was due to the presence of the wells wasn't that massive in terms of volume. It's massive in terms of every well was contaminated, but it wasn't large volumes of seawater that went in. So it got diluted and flushed out quickly. So I think in terms of that, the implication on water resources is there's going to be major issues during the disaster because they won't have access to water because everything will be salty. But in the long term, it actually resolved itself quickly.

They were also able to somewhat document the recovery of the surrounding community.

Cardenas: We saw how the place recovered from a hydrogeologic perspective. And also how the place changed. So that's also why we felt like we kind of bonded with the people, because we were seeing them every three months and we would hang out with them. The upside to this story, the silver lining, is that after this happened, they installed pipe water into the village we studied, which they didn't have before. And that was really the main thing. If there's anything that would have come out of this, the knowledge that would have come out is, piped water is necessary. In places like Tacloban, water distribution was restored quickly because not all pipes were destroyed. But in a place like San Antonio, the village we were at, there was nothing to restore, because there was no water distribution systems. So that's really the main one, and they have since installed it.

Bayani’s paper concludes, quote, “Since growing coastal populations will continue to rely on

groundwater for their needs, strategies for reducing vulnerability to intense storm surge-caused groundwater contamination and mitigating its effects are needed. Belowground aquifer devastation from storm surge is unseen but needs not be unforeseen.” end quote.

The study was published in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters.

Next episode, we’ll tackle resettlement.

Mangada:  Before Haiyan, the houses that were constructed were made of light materials. And they were actually informal settlers. They did not have regular income. And it's the same people who were transferred to the Tacloban North Resettlement. So, if government will not provide them the needed livelihood assistance, income generating assistance, it'll become another slum area in Tacloban North.

Carried by Water was created by me, Mario Soriano, and is a production of Blue Lab at Princeton University. This episode was produced by me, along with Patrick Jaojoco and Braeden Carroll. Sound engineering by Braeden Carroll.

Thanks to Lakan Uhay Alegre for translating our interview with the Paraiso Mangrove Cooperative.

Thanks to our friends at the Princeton Filipino Community Undergraduate Club and Blue Lab, Cyron Mandia, Lu Esteban, and Jayme Collins, for providing voice overs for this episode.

For their support and expertise, we also thank the High Meadows Environmental Institute, the Princeton Humanities Council, and Office of the Dean of Research. We also thank Kouvenda Media.

Shoutout to colleagues who inspired this episode, namely, Blue Lab’s Dr. Nate Otjen and Gemma Sahwell, with their work on multispecies justice and coral archives, respectively, as well as the folks in the Integrated Groundwater Modeling Center led by Dr. Reed Maxwell.

Allison Carruth is the director of Blue Lab, and Barron Bixler is the creative director.

Visit our website, bluelab.princeton.edu, for more information and photographs for this episode.

Until next time.

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