At Cebu’s Cotcot River, structural errors plague Discaya-linked projects

At the downstream of Cebu’s Cotcot River, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Cebu 5th District Engineering Office (DEO) initiated a multimillion-peso flood control project intended to protect residents in Sitio Sulima, Barangay Cotcot, Liloan during severe flooding scenarios.

It didn’t during 2025’s Typhoon Tino (Kalmaegi) onslaught.

The said project was initiated on February 16, 2024, and was completed on December 26, 2024. For a total contract cost of P96.4 million, the DPWH Cebu 5th DEO built an embankment, set up a sidewalk, and installed solar-powered street lights.

This project was awarded to St. Matthew Gen. Contractor & Development Corp. and MC Geometric Proportions Inc. St. Matthew is owned by the Discayas — among the country’s most notorious government contractors, who are now facing malversation cases. 

Curlee Discaya is facing a malversation case for his involvement in the anomalous release of P53.9 million for a flood control project in Calumpit, Bulacan. Sarah Discaya was also named in the complaint but is currently facing a separate malversation case stemming from a P96-million ghost project in Davao Occidental.

Based on the contract awarded to them, the job was simple: build an embankment with a pathway on the side and put up street lights so residents can see where they’re going at night.

Where did it falter? It ignored a very simple design that engineering experts commissioned by the DPWH, supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 2017, had made to improve the area’s drainage — a diversion channel, specifically in Sitio Sulima. 

The absence of the diversion channel manifested in an overflow of the embankment during Typhoon Tino, as debris piled up at the singular water path, unable to find alternative exit points.

“Nagpundok didto pag-agi [sa baha]. Naa pa’y mga balay, mga hayop,” Sulima resident Lourile Amaro told Rappler on May 21. (It all piled up there when the floodwaters passed through. There were houses, animals.)

The design for the diversion channel was among the recommended flood control interventions laid out in the Metro Cebu Integrated Flood and Drainage System Master Plan (MCIFDSMP), or commonly referred to as the “Metro Cebu flood control master plan.“

In 2012, the Metro Cebu Development and Coordinating Board, responding to the rising cases of flooding throughout the metropolitan areas, requested the DPWH for assistance in creating a flood control master plan. This later became the master plan commissioned by DPWH in 2017 and was one of the priority projects under the JICA-led 2013 Roadmap Study for Sustainable Development of Metro Cebu.

From 2017 to the present, many of the designs laid out in the Metro Cebu flood control master plan were left unrealized, and the Discaya project was only one out of hundreds.

Rappler took a further look at contracts and documents to understand how the Discaya project was approved and why it ended up deviating from the master plan.

P96-million project

The project in question, Contract ID No. 24HI0014, covered 620 meters downstream of the Cotcot River, and was approved by DPWH Cebu 5th District Engineer Ma. Jannet Nero.

On September 1, 2025, technical staff from the DPWH Cebu 5th DEO inspected the project and issued a Notice of Defects when chipped plaster was found at the project site.

NOTICE. The DPWH Cebu 5th DEO said that the identified minor defects would be rectified by the contractor at no cost to the government. Screenshot from DPWH Region 7 Facebook Page

The project was completed on December 26, 2024. This means that a defective portion of the flood control project was identified less than a year after it was finished.

Engineer Grezel Savariz of the DPWH Cebu 5th DEO, however, told Rappler on June 2, 2026, that the defect was considered only minor and was brought about by high temperatures that caused the plaster to crumble.

Savariz said the project was designed to have a walkway for residents on top of the embankment. When asked why there were no fences to prevent accidents, the engineer said that it was not included in the planning and design stage.

A quick look at the contract agreement showed that P1.3 million was also allocated for the purchase of 13 solar-powered LED road lamp posts.

LAMPS, NO FENCE. A pathway with no safety fence was built on a flood mitigation project in Sitio Sulima, Barangay Cotcot, Liloan, Cebu. This photo was taken on June 7, 2026.

Proposed solutions from the Metro Cebu Master Plan, however, never included solar panels or pathways along the river’s downstream. 

Yumi Espina, an architect-engineer and environmental planner, told Rappler that the enforcement of a three-meter easement should have been prioritized in the area over the installation of street lights and a pathway.

Under the Water Code of the Philippines (Presidential Decree 1067), the minimum distance from rivers that should remain clear of private structures is three meters.

“What is the use of the solar street lights? If there is no easement, it would even invite more settlers to occupy the easement,” Espina said.

RECOMMENDATIONS. Apart from a diversion channel, the Metro Cebu flood control master plan recommended that the original waterway of the Cotcot River should be retained. Screenshot from the Metro Cebu Integrated Flood and Drainage System Master Plan 

The Metro Cebu Integrated Flood and Drainage System Master Plan recommended that a diversion channel be made downstream of the Cotcot River to improve the waterway’s drainage capacity. 

The diversion channel, designed to have a shorter alignment of 650 meters to less than 200 meters, would supposedly facilitate drainage of the Cotcot River, but no such structure stands at the project site, as of this writing.

Sulima resident Angelyn Cabatingan whose house was right next to the Discaya-linked flood control project told Rappler that the water from the project overflowed during Typhoon Tino and the embankment walls were punctured by the flood waters and debris, leaving fissures across the revetments.

During the Tino onslaught, Cabatingan watched her house get flogged by pounding winds and rainfall, causing the back portion to give way. She was still luckier than her neighbors, who had to climb onto the roofs of their homes for safety and watch their clothes get washed away by the torrent.

At least 11,322 houses were damaged in Liloan and more than 12,000 residents were left homeless and forced to stay in evacuation shelters. To this day, more than 2,000 residents in the town remain displaced.

LOSS. The family of Angelyn Cabatingan spent more than P20,000 to repair the house damaged by Tino in November 2025.

“Kuyaw kaayo basta muuwan (It’s terrifying whenever it rains),” Cabatingan said. 

But that’s not all. The DPWH Central Visayas office awarded a P149-million flood control project to MC Geometric Proportion and the Discayas through Alpha & Omega General Contractor & Development Corporation.

The project was for an embankment on the upstream partition of the Cotcot River. It was initiated in April 2024 and completed in March 2025.

On November 16, 2025, ICI Special Adviser and Investigator Rodolfo Azurin Jr., along with DPWH officials, inspected flood control projects in Cebu, and confirmed that this upstream project, among others, did not follow Metro Cebu’s master plan for flood control and drainage systems.

RISK. Unfinished housing units can be seen right next to the Discaya-linked upstream flood control project in Barangay Tamiao, Compostela, Cebu. This photo was taken on June 7, 2026.

Forgotten master plan

Even if the infrastructure projects had been done properly, they would not have survived the catastrophic flooding unleashed by Typhoon Tino, according to Maria Nenita Jumao-as, director of the University of San Carlos-Water Resources Center.

“I would like to believe that if [the Cebu master plan projects] were implemented the way they were supposed to be implemented, then we would have less damage and less loss of human life,” said DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon, in a ONE News interview in November 2025.

Dizon’s statement was based on the ICI’s assessment of flood control projects in Cebu.

In an exclusive interview with Rappler, Cebu Vice Governor Glenn Soco said that the master plan was supposedly adopted by the Regional Development Council in 2017. But he added that Cebu’s flood mitigation failures stem from a fragmented system plagued by bureaucratic disconnects and rigid financial frameworks.

This is compounded by the Duterte-era cash budgeting system, he said. Under the cash budgeting system, LGUs are given a budget implementation period of one year, with an extended payment period of three months after the fiscal year.

Soco said that they could not apply the cash budgeting system to projects like relocation and flood control projects as these usually take more than one fiscal year, forcing them to return the funds to the national treasury before completing the project.

In September 2022, then-DPWH Central Visayas Regional Director Ernesto Gregorio Jr. told the Cebu Provincial Board that the master plan was given a budget of P44 billion in 2018 and an implementation period of 10 years. At the time in 2022, only P1.8 billion had been used for the implementation of the plan.

“I think what has happened is that instead of a unified approach to address flooding consistent with the master plan, it has become a ‘piecemeal’ [approach] on a per district office level,” the Vice Governor added.

According to Engineer Jose Renee Miole of the DPWH Cebu 5th DEO, it falls under the DPWH’s responsibility to produce designs for flood control projects along the Cotcot River.

PLANNED. The Roadmap Study for Sustainable Urban Development in Metro Cebu published in June 2015 indicated that the proposed implementation of the comprehensive study for the flood control master plan would be scheduled between 2015 to 2020.

In November 2025, in the aftermath of Tino, the DPWH secretary announced that his department would make sure to implement the master plan. 

As of June 2, however, DPWH Cebu 5th DEO said they have yet to receive a copy of the Metro Cebu Integrated Flood and Drainage System Master Plan.

As plans to implement the recommended interventions in the 2017 Cebu master plan are still elusive, what remains clear is that it is only a matter of time before residents are yet again left to fend for themselves when Tino-like downpours strike the province once more.

“We’re scared and traumatized…they ought to do these flood control projects right this time so that kind of flood never happens again,” Cabatingan said. – Rappler.com

*Some quotes were translated into English for brevity

Reporting for this story was supported by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) under the Extreme Weather in the Philippines Investigative Reporting Fellowship