Engr. Reynaldo Mencias, NIA-PDDP project manager, told The STAR that the dam project is now 94.7- percent complete and will be ready for a test-run by next month. He added that an initial 5,000 hectares of agricultural lands in its beneficiary areas will be irrigated by the dam.
Mencias said that the PDDP-IC will irrigate a total of 10,500 hectares in the towns of San Luis, Mexico, Candaba, Sta. Ana and this town.
Funded through a loan worth P4.5 billion from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), the project which has four components – diversion dam and stilling basin, pumping station at the western area, irrigation and drainage land acquisition – will benefit 7,000 farming families in these areas.
Mencias said that the project, which, is both economically viable and technically sound with an internal rate of return (IRR) of 16.82 percent and a project life span of 50 years.
He said that farmers in the Nueva Ecija towns of Cabiao and San Antonio will benefit with the construction of a 29-kilometer long dike along the banks of the Rio Chico River and structures to protect the San Antonio Swamp from flooding and an eight-kilometer long access dike in Cabiao which will serve as a farm-to-market road that will enable them to transport their produce to the market. The Cabiao dike, he said, will cost P20 million.
He said that they also submitted a proposal to the Investment Coordinating Committee Technical Board (ICCTB) of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) to finance the right-of-way acquisition of 96 hectares of farmlands that will be affected in Cabiao at a cost of P100 million.
Cabiao farmers, he stressed, will benefit from the project since they can pump water from creeks irrigated by the dam.
The PDDP-IC was conceived in 1975 following a comprehensive development study conducted for the Pampanga Delta and Candaba Swamp areas under the technical cooperation of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The study was completed in 1978 but it was not immediately implemented.
It was only in 1980 when then President Ferdinand Marcos revived the project by requesting the Japan International Cooperating Agency (JICA) to conduct an irrigation study plan later named Pampanga Delta Development Project-Irrigation Component.