Council members said the move is necessary to prevent potential loss of life and property in the event of heavy rains or a major weather disturbance.
The request was contained in a resolution proposed by Vice Mayor Tomas Osmeña and approved during the council’s regular session on June 16.
The council also passed two related motions.
The first seeks to have the mayor initiate proactive measures, including coordinating with the developer, barangay officials, and residents who may be affected by possible flooding linked to the project. The goal is to ensure the technical effectiveness of the flood mitigation plan submitted by developer Mont Property Group.
The second motion reiterates the City Council’s request for the Technical Infrastructure Committee to submit its own assessment and recommendations regarding flooding concerns associated with the development.
Public safety
During Tuesday’s session, Osmeña temporarily stepped down as presiding officer to deliver a privilege speech on the issue.
In his speech, he urged fellow councilors to formally ask the mayor to issue a cease-and-desist order (CDO) covering Monterrazas’ ongoing development activities, including hill-cutting operations.
Osmeña argued that construction should remain suspended until the project’s detention ponds have been tested by a major typhoon and proven effective in preventing floods in the low-lying communities located below the development.
He stressed that public safety should take precedence over continued construction, particularly amid concerns that runoff from the project could exacerbate flooding in nearby residential areas.
Russian roulette
In the meantime, he added, Mont Property Group, the developer of the subdivision, must continue expanding and constructing detention ponds.
While there was only a slim chance that these ponds would not work, Osmeña pointed out that the consequences of a disaster of this nature could be fatal—similar to playing the deadly game of Russian roulette, in which a participant places a single bullet into a revolver, spins the cylinder, points the muzzle at their own head, and pulls the trigger.
“What are the chances when you pull the trigger that there's a bullet aligned? Small. One out of six… That's 18 percent, 18.5 percent. If it happens, you are not 18 percent dead,” he told his colleagues.
Osmeña reiterated that mountainside development must be carried out carefully and that detention ponds must be capable of holding runoff water to prevent flooding in low-lying communities.
“Now we are playing with people's lives, and we have to be very careful when you're playing with people's lives,” the vice mayor said.
Talk it out
During the meeting, opposition councilor Pastor Alcover Jr. suggested that Osmeña talk to Archival directly and discuss his concerns, since both belong to the same party. The vice mayor did not respond.
Osmeña leads the local party Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK), which backed Archival’s political career from 1995, when he first ran for councilor, until Osmeña handpicked him to run for mayor in 2025.
Monterrazas de Cebu, an expansive high-end residential development in the hills of Barangay Guadalupe, Cebu City, resumed development after the Department of Environment and Natural Resources lifted the stoppage order on April 6.
This came after the developer paid a fine of P400,000 on Feb. 16 and complied with all requirements.
Detention ponds work
During a news conference in April, Mont Property Group officials said it was the poor drainage system—not the development—that caused flooding in the communities below the project site and in adjacent barangays during Super Typhoon Tino on Nov. 3, 2025.
They cited a hydrological study conducted by the University of the Philippines' Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology, which found that Monterrazas' detention ponds reduced runoff compared with a scenario in which the site had neither development nor detention ponds.
Had the detention ponds not been built, the officials said, the risk of flash flooding from the site would have been greater.
The same study also showed that Tino dumped 428 millimeters of rain within 24 hours—comparable to the rainfall brought by Typhoon Ondoy in 2009, one of the worst flooding events in the country's history.
Mont Property officials also said Monterrazas has increased the number of its retention ponds from 18 to 23, giving them a combined capacity of 53,000 cubic meters of water. They said this is 81 percent more than what is required under the project's Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC).
Skeptical
But Osmeña was skeptical of Monterrazas’ assurance that it had built enough detention ponds to cover 200 percent of the requirement.
He said major developments in Cebu City had triggered floods in other areas in the past, not because of the volume of water, but because of the sudden rush of water flowing downstream—“just like flushing a toilet.”
Osmeña said the city government must put Monterrazas on notice that it had been warned about the risks. If the developer continued to ignore these and tragedy struck, he added, it could be tantamount to criminal negligence.
“Why do we have to wait for somebody to die? What does that make us as a government? We only protect the rich. They don't protect the poor, because the poor don't have influencers. They don't have a PR firm. They don't have a law firm to defend them. They don't have a voice,” said the vice mayor.
“We have a major social responsibility, and what I'm suggesting is let them continue to build their detention ponds, and we should wait for a very heavy rain, and then maybe we can judge and see if it's enough,” he added. —Ed: Corrie S. Narisma
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