Angat’s water level recedes faster than expected

ANGELES CITY — The water level at the Angat Dam, a major source of potable water for Metro Manila, continues to recede and may fall to such a level as to totally deprive some 15,000 hectares of rice lands in Pampanga and Bulacan of irrigation by the end of this month, the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) said yesterday.

In an interview with The Star, Lito Cardona, supervising engineer of NIA’s operations division, noted that as of yesterday, the water level at Angat was at 190.9 meters, or way below the average 200.92-meter level expected at this time of the year.

"It’s ebbing too fast. Last March 1 and 2, we monitored the ebbing rate at 39 meter per day. At this rate, the water level would be down to only about 79 meters by the end of March," Cardona said.

He warned that Angat’s water level should be 180 meters at the minimum for its water to continue flowing to some 15,000 hectares of ricelands in Pampanga and Bulacan.

He noted that the farmers planted rice, which takes four months to be ready for harvesting, only last January.

"We never expected the adverse situation at Angat, so they planted. It is likely that their crops will be destroyed and the only possible remedy is for rains to replenish water at the dam," he said, adding that attempts to produce artificial rain through cloud-seeding operations by the Philippine Air Force continues.

But Cardona said that it would take several days of heavy rain for the dam to fill up. "One hour of rain would not be adequate to normalize Angat’s water level," he said.

NIA’s irrigation water allocation from Angat has been reduced to only 20 percent, and by April, this would even be lowered by 50 percent.

But the good news is that only five percent has been reduced from the volume of water being funnelled from the dam to Metro Manila. "The highest priority is till potable water for Metro Manila," Cardona stressed.

Melburgo Chiu, Napocor vice president for operations, told The Star that 93 percent of the water allocation from Angat is prioritized for Metro Manila.

But despite the low allocation for Napocor’s hydrothermal plant at Angat, Chiu said he is not expecting power outages in the coming dry months.

"There are other power plants which will readily take over to fill in the demand, unless a major breakdown occurs in the power plants," he said.