Bulacan, Pampanga farmers to get more irrigation water from Angat Dam

CRITICAL LEVEL The tree line marks the normal water level in Angat Dam, Norzagaray, Bulacan but its level continues to dip as evidenced by the receding water line on Tuesday, June 25, 2019. The drop in the Dam’s water level was due to a lack of rainfall brought by the prevailing weal El Nino in the country. INQUIRER PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

CITY OF MALOLOS—Thousands of rice farmers preparing for their second cropping in Bulacan and Pampanga provinces will receive more irrigation allocations from Angat Dam this month, National Irrigation Administration (NIA) officials said.

Felix Robles, the NIA water control chief in Bulacan, said the National Water Resources Board (NWRB) had approved the 20-cubic-meter-per-second allocation for 21,000 hectares of rice fields in the two provinces.

The NWRB started to cut the allocation for farmers last month since the Angat Dam reservoir’s water level had been dropping. Seventeen farming towns in the two provinces get their irrigation water supply from the dam through lower Bustos Dam, also in Bulacan.

Angat Dam is also the major source of water for domestic consumption in Metro Manila.

DelayMonsoon rains had raised the dam’s stock to around a meter daily since last week, prompting Bulacan farmers to seek additional allocation up to 30 cms. Ildefonso Canquin, a farm leader in Bulacan, said the lack of allocation for irrigation had delayed their second cropping that should have started in November or early December.

Robles said the NIA had been releasing about 10 to 14 cms of water to irrigate farms in five towns in Bulacan and four towns in Pampanga since December. But Canquin said the other farms in Bulacan had yet to receive their allocation.

Last week, Bulacan Gov. Daniel Fernando asked the NIA and the NWRB to increase the allocation for farmers. Although the NWRB had approved the 20-cms allocation for irrigation, no schedule had been set yet for the release.

Pantabangan Dam

In Nueva Ecija province, the water level at Pantabangan Dam has not reached the targeted elevation to irrigate 128,014.53 ha of rice fields covered by the Upper Pampanga River Integrated Irrigation System (UPRIIS) in the province as well as in Pampanga and Bulacan. According to UPRIIS, the water level at Pantabangan Dam only reached 212 meters above sea level, 5 m short of the target by the end of the rainy season.

Rosalinda Bote, UPRIIS department manager, said 6,000 ha of farms in the outskirts of Nueva Ecija and Tarlac province, particularly Anao town, would not be irrigated due to the limited dam stock.

But Bote said the affected farmers would get assistance from the government.

She said the Department of Agriculture would distribute seeds for high-value crops while the NWRB offered to conduct cloud seeding operations over the Pantabangan Dam.—REPORTS FROM CARMELA REYES-ESTROPE AND ARMAND GALANG