Cloud seeding plan worries veggie farmers
A ZAMBOANGA City resident transports containers of water aboard a boat as drought continues to dry up water sources in the city. JULIE S. ALIPALA/INQUIRER MINDANAO
ZAMBOANGA CITY—Vegetable farmers here urged authorities to drop plans to seed clouds to deal with a drought that has dried up sources of water and is killing agriculture, saying the operation could actually do more harm than good.
Sheila Belen Covarrubias, city information officer, earlier said that cloud seeding operations were set to start on Feb. 15 at the behest of the city government, to help address the effects of the dry spell, one of the most common effects of the El Niño phenomenon.
“It will be very costly,” Covarrubias said.
But Annaliza Pabayos, a vegetable farmer in Barangay San Roque, said that in the past, cloud seeding killed vegetables and she did not want a repeat of that.
“I prefer to fetch water from the river to my field,” Pabayos said, narrating how her vegetables wilted last year and the previous years due to cloud seeding-induced rains.
Celestiano Ahamad, a farm caretaker in Barangay Dita, agreed with Pabayos.
“Cloud seeding dries up the leaves of corn, cassavas and sweet potatoes,” Ahamad said.
Instead of spending for cloud seeding operations, he said the government should allocate fuel to farmers so they can use their water pumps to draw water from the rivers.
Maribel Enriquez, chief meteorologist of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration here, said cloud seeding, indeed, increases the salt concentration in rain.
“If (cloud seeding-induced) rainwater falls on farms and through osmosis, the leaves will wither,” Enriquez said.
She said the problem could be avoided if rainwater from cloud seeding operations goes directly to water reservoirs or rivers because the unwanted salt could be eliminated by natural filtration processes.
In cloud seeding, chemicals like silver iodide and potassium iodide, which are all forms of salt, are used to induce rains.
Diosdado Palacat, the city agriculturist, said cloud seeding could still save some 49 out of 716 hectares of farms which had survived the onslaught of the prolonged dry spell.
Leonardo Ray Vasquez, the general manager of the Zamboanga City Water District (ZCWD), also agreed that cloud seeding could be harmful to farms.
Vasquez, however, said cloud seeding is needed to boost the city’s water supply.
“Cloud seeding is not a sure hit due to wind movement but we have to fill the dam,” he said.
ZCWD has resorted to water rationing for its 72,000 customers as the water level at the Pasonanca River, its main source, dropped below normal operating levels.
From 74.20 meters in December, the water level at the dam had gone down to “below 74 meters,” according to Vasquez.
“A few weeks ago, we imposed a 12-hour rationing. Now it’s seven to eight hours only. It’s getting worse by the day,” he said. Julie Alipala, Inquirer Mindanao
