Hagonoy, a coastal Bulacan town on Manila Bay, has revived the old pilapil, the earth dikes that fishpond owners built decades ago, to hold back tidal floods that now submerge nearly all of its 26 barangays.
The flood-control effort began in Barangay San Sebastian last year and was formalized through a municipal council resolution and a memorandum of agreement between the town government and the barangay, according to a report by Inquirer.net published on October 16, 2026. The municipal government supplies the materials, mostly large bamboo installed by hand, while village leaders and residents provide the labor.
Bamboo and old embankments as a nature-based fix
Mayor Rosario Sy-Alvarado Mendoza said the technique borrows from private fishpond owners who used pilapil in earlier decades, before the industry collapsed under the high salinity of Manila Bay waters.
“These flood-control projects are also nature-based because they are earth dikes largely made of bamboo and revising the old embankments of the town,” Mendoza told the Inquirer.
She said residents along Peralta Street in San Sebastian have never seen dry ground because the tides never recede. Mary the Queen, once the most prestigious subdivision in Hagonoy, now sits permanently under high-tide floodwater. The revived dikes are also expected to shield the downstream villages of Sto. Nino, San Agustin and San Nicolas.
A bigger answer in Malolos, designed by the Dutch
Mendoza said Hagonoy's long-term solution lies in a 70-million-peso, 14-hectare nature-based coastal protection pilot in the island barangay of Pamarawan in Malolos City, designed by the Dutch firm Royal HaskoningDHV. It is billed as the first implemented nature-based solutions coastal protection project in the Philippines.
The project combines bamboo and oyster breakwaters to weaken wave energy, oyster bags to help reefs and habitats recover, sediment traps to gradually raise the seabed, and mangrove regeneration areas. Together, the designers say, these form a natural defense system that reduces storm damage, rebuilds coastal elevation and opens new livelihoods in oyster and fish production.
Malolos Mayor Christian Natividad said the pilot is the product of 16 years of research by the Alyansa ng mga BaybayBayan sa Lalawigan ng Bulacan at Pampanga, which began in 2010. Former Hagonoy Mayor Angel Cruz, the Alyansa president who once lived in the Netherlands, brought the concept home. All coastal communities of Hagonoy, Malolos, Bulakan, Paombong, Obando and Meycauayan in Bulacan, and Macabebe, Sasmuan and Apalit in Pampanga belong to the alliance.
“I think it is a must for Hagonoy because the land there is very much depleted. The depletion started in the 1970s when the mangroves were removed to give way to the expansion of the fishponds which at that time have become highly commercialized. They put up earth dikes but failed to replant mangroves,” Natividad said.
“When the fishpond industry started to collapse due to the high salinity of Manila Bay waters, they abandoned the earth dikes which allowed tidal waters to penetrate the inner communities,” he added.
Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon has expressed interest in funding the second phase of the Malolos project after the Department of Public Works and Highways included it in its list of national flood-mitigation programs. The Manila Times reported on October 14 that similar measures, including bamboo cribbing and earth dikes, are being explored for other barangays in Bulacan. (