CL farms to get irrigation in next 4 months, says NIA
Antonio Nongel, operations chief of the NIA’s Upper Pampanga River Integrated Irrigation System (UPRIIS), told The STAR that despite the lack of rainfall, the water level at Pantabangan Dam has reached 194.10 meters.
While the water level is below the ideal 203.53 meters, the volume is enough to irrigate 84,830 hectares this transplanting season, he said.
Nongel said Pantabangan Dam is now releasing 100 cubic meters of water per second to farmlands, mostly in Nueva Ecija, considered the country’s rice granary, as well as parts of Pampanga and Bulacan.
But due to lack of rains, Nongel said the inflow rate of water to Pantabangan from the Casecnan tunnel, which was built to divert water from rivers farther north, is only 19 cubic meters per second.
“Despite this, the dam has enough water stock to sustain the water transplanting needs of the farmers,” he said, recalling that in 1993, the dam’s water level went down to as low as 172 meters.
UPRIIS information officer Marie Cudia said that ordinarily, farmers relying on Pantabangan Dam are usually advised on the volume of palay seedlings they need to prepare for transplanting based on the weather forecast.
After government weather experts said last year that they expected a rainy La Niña phenomenon this year, Cudia said the farmers were told to maximize their production.
“It turns out that the rains have so far been scarce,” she said.
Still, water released from Pantabangan has been kept at adequate levels to cope with the farmers’ expectations.
“The volume of water being released would be enough to irrigate farms until the farmers finish transplanting in the next four months,” she said.
Despite this assurance, Cudia said UPRIIS personnel have been deployed to help farmers manage their irrigation.
“We are encouraging the farmers to also tap irrigation from local rivers,” she said. – Ding Cervantes
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