Water level sa mga dam sa Luzon, patuloy na bumababa sa gitna ng El Niño | BT

6 months ago

Sa gitna ng El Niño, patuloy na bumababa ang tubig sa ilang pangunahing dam partikular sa Luzon.

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Transcript

00:00 In the middle of El Nino, the water is continuously decreasing in some dams, particularly here in Luzon.

00:06 The question of many is, can the Administrator of the National Irrigation Administration, Engineer Eduardo Guillen, still be able to handle the stormy weather?

00:16 Good morning and welcome to Balitang Hali, Engineer.

00:20 Sir Ian, Ma'am Pony, good morning to all of our viewers.

00:26 Good morning to you, sir. This is based on your monitoring.

00:31 How is the situation of our dams? Because it is continuously decreasing, right?

00:36 Have we reached a critical level?

00:39 Ma'am, you know that the water level in our dams is a normal process.

00:46 That is the concept of a reservoir-type dam.

00:49 Because we use water to irrigate our rice fields.

00:54 Of course, when the wet season comes, we will refill the water.

00:58 By the way, most of our rice fields are in terminal stage.

01:03 That means we only have one water source and we will let it dry so that our farmers can eat.

01:11 Maybe we can just expound on this because there are farms that are in a stalemate, right?

01:20 What is the system that we are doing to help our farmers?

01:25 That is true, Ma'am.

01:28 When it is in terminal stage and it is drying, our farmers will have a hard time.

01:38 But when it comes to our irrigated areas, most of them are irrigated.

01:46 In fact, in the whole Philippines, initially, we planned to irrigate 20% of our vulnerable areas.

01:55 But it turned out that after our evaluation, we were only able to irrigate 1% of our vulnerable areas.

02:03 So, on the side of what I am saying, our irrigated areas, Ma'am,

02:08 of course, we only irrigated 60% of our vulnerable areas.

02:14 So, the other areas that are not covered by NIA, we monitored them and they are not drought.

02:22 Administrator, are there any crops that cannot be harvested now that the heat is coming in?

02:28 How is the livelihood of the farmers who are completely affected by this heat?

02:33 The truth is, Sir, in NIA, we have what we call a calendar of traffic planning.

02:39 So, we determine right away which are the ends of our irrigation that we cannot irrigate.

02:47 So, we are talking to our farmers to diversify their crops that do not require much irrigation,

02:57 such as corn, mung beans, as long as they are high-value crops.

03:03 So, it means that if they cannot get water, it does not mean that they cannot earn.

03:11 At the same time, the farmers that we have affected are insured in the Philippine Crop Insurance, PCIC.

03:17 Yes.

03:20 Then, we have a program with the DOLE, NDSWD, their Customer Work Program and Tukad Program,

03:30 where we are also temporarily cleaning and desilting their crops if they cannot get water.

03:37 Administrator, we have not experienced the El Niño in the Philippines.

03:42 So, the question that many are asking is, what is the long-term initiative of NIA to make sure that it can be effective?

03:49 The long-term solution is to build more rice harvests.

03:55 We have seen, like Magat Dam, we were able to irrigate all our farm of service area because we have a reservoir.

04:05 So, if it rains or there is a flood, we will carry water.

04:10 When this season comes, dry season, we can use the water we have saved.

04:16 That is the long-term solution, sir. We should build more reservoir-type dams.

04:23 That is the order of our President.

04:25 Administrator, I just want to ask you, because our experts said that after this El Niño,

04:32 they expect that the flood will come.

04:36 In this situation, what are you most worried about in terms of our crops

04:44 and the preservation of our crops, of course, protected against these elements?

04:51 That's what I was saying earlier, ma'am.

04:53 We have a saying, in every crisis lies the seed of opportunity.

04:57 If we have high dams, if it rains, we can save water and we can avoid flooding.

05:05 When there is an El Niño, we can use that water for our food production.

05:12 We prefer an El Niño because the sun is long.

05:16 The yield of our crops is higher when it is sunny than when it rains.

05:21 All right. Thank you very much for your time in our news this afternoon, sir.

Water level sa mga dam sa Luzon, patuloy na bumababa sa gitna ng El Niño | BT

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