There is something profoundly wrong when a city spends millions trying to prevent flooding while its waterways continue to fill with garbage.

And nowhere is that contradiction more visible than in Parañaque.

The city’s flooding problem is not merely a question of rainfall, drainage capacity or climate change. It is also a question of what happens to the garbage after it is collected.

In March 2025, the MMDA turned over 25 trash traps to Parañaque precisely because garbage was clogging waterways and drainage systems. Officials warned that solid waste does not merely create an environmental and health hazard—it can compromise pumping stations and reduce their effectiveness during heavy rains.

More recently, the scale of the problem became even harder to ignore.

More than 330,000 metric tons of silt and waste had reportedly been removed from roughly eight kilometers of Parañaque’s river channels since September 2024.

And just this week, as heavy rains battered the metropolis, images of garbage accumulating in the Parañaque River near Baclaran once again circulated widely.

So perhaps it is time to ask an uncomfortable question:
Where exactly is all the garbage going?

There are allegations circulating among people familiar with the waste-hauling business that some private contractors may be facing a dramatically different economic equation.
The allegation is that the supposed “share” demanded by political operators has increased—from around 20 percent to as much as 30 percent of the proceeds.

If true, that is not a minor adjustment.
That is a direct assault on the economics of waste disposal.

Because if a contractor is paid to collect, transport and legally dispose of garbage, but a substantial portion of the contract value allegedly disappears before the waste even reaches its final destination, somebody eventually has to absorb the cost.
And there are only so many places where that cost can go.

The contractor can accept lower profits.
The contractor can reduce operating expenses.
The contractor can cut corners.
Or—if the allegations are true—the garbage can end up somewhere it was never supposed to be.
An estero.
A creek.
A vacant lot.
A riverbank.
A drainage channel.
And suddenly, the flooding problem becomes a business problem.

This is where government needs to stop looking only at the people throwing plastic bottles into canals.
Yes, ordinary citizens have a responsibility.
But waste management is an industry.
There are contracts.
There are collection schedules.
There are trucks.
There are weighing systems.
There are disposal receipts.
There are transfer stations.
There are landfill gate records.
There are GPS coordinates.
There are environmental permits.
There are payments.
There is an entire paper and digital trail.

If somebody is illegally dumping commercial quantities of garbage into esteros, the government should be able to find out who is doing it.

The question is whether it has the political will to follow the garbage truck all the way to its destination.

Because it is easy to blame the ordinary Filipino for throwing garbage into a creek.
It is considerably harder to ask:
Who was paid to collect that garbage?
Who was paid to transport it?
Who was paid to dispose of it?
Where did the truck actually go?
Was the garbage really brought to an authorized landfill?
How much was actually delivered?
And perhaps the most uncomfortable question:
Who benefits when the system fails?
These questions deserve answers.
Not accusations.
Not rumors.
Not political finger-pointing.
An investigation.

The allegation that the political “share” in waste contracts has supposedly risen from 20 percent to 30 percent must either be substantiated or debunked.

If it is false, government should say so.
If it is true, somebody should be held accountable.

And if it is partly true, the public deserves to know exactly how the system works.

Because there is something particularly perverse about spending billions of pesos on flood control while garbage collection and disposal systems potentially undermine the very infrastructure being built to keep our communities dry.
You can build a bigger drainage system.
You can dredge a river.
You can install pumping stations.
You can construct flood-control structures.
But if garbage continues to be dumped into the waterways, eventually the water will find another way.
And it will find that way through someone’s home.

Parañaque has already seen what happens when waterways become garbage repositories.

In January 2025, San Miguel Corporation’s Better Rivers PH initiative reported removing 93,000 tons of silt and waste from portions of the Parañaque river system and clearing storm drains around NAIA.

The government itself has acknowledged the connection between garbage and flooding.
So now it should follow the logic to its conclusion.
Don’t just remove the garbage. Find out how it got there.
Audit the waste-hauling contracts.
Track the trucks.
Compare collection volumes against landfill receipts.
Check GPS logs.
Examine disposal manifests.
Inspect transfer stations.
Cross-check payments.
Identify subcontractors.
And, most importantly, determine whether any contractor has been economically pressured to dispose of garbage illegally.

Because if somebody is taking a cut from a waste-disposal contract and that cut is forcing the contractor to cut corners, then this isn’t simply a garbage problem.

It is corruption with a floodwater consequence.
And if the allegations are completely untrue, then the same investigation will clear the contractors who are being accused.
Either way, the public wins.
The Filipino people don’t need another cleanup after every storm.
They need a waste-disposal system where the garbage goes where taxpayers are paying for it to go.

Because the next time Parañaque floods, we should not be asking only how much rain fell.
We should also be asking:

How much garbage was supposed to go to the landfill—and how much ended up in the estero instead?

That is a question the government owes the people an answer to.