Consumers urged to conserve water

IT SEEMS Angat Dam may reach its lowest level in the past nine years as water in the vital reservoir went down further Tuesday morning, June 25, 2019.

Monitoring showed the dam’s water level went past its critical level to 158.77 meters, or 0.32 meter lower than last Monday’s 159.09 meters.

The dam’s normal water level is 212 meters, while its critical level for drinking water is 160 meters.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) warned that consumers should conserve water while regulators are scrambling to review water allocations.

Current domestic supply is 36 cubic meters per second (cms), down from 40 cms since the Angat Dam breached its 160-meter critical level last June 22 with water allocated for farm irrigation having been stopped since May.

This means that the 4 cms additional reduction in water allocation is already equivalent to the consumption of almost 700,000 consumers per day.

The dam’s water level is barely meters from reaching its lowest level in July 2010. The dam’s water supply is expected to go down further this week.

Angat Dam supplies 90 percent of the domestic water supply of Metro Manila. It also supplies irrigation to 20,000 hectares of farmland in Bulacan, 2,000 hectares of Pampanga’s farmlands in Candaba, and border lands of San Luis and Santa Ana.

The Department of Agriculture said that the domestic purpose of Angat Dam’s water would surely compete with the dam’s water if it does not reach full capacity.

Angat Dam reached its lowest level at 157.76 meters in July 2010, an El Niño year, which prompted authorities to temporarily stop operations.

Pagasa is expecting water inside the dam to be replenished with expected rains this July. However, the El Niño weather phenomenon is likely to last up to November this year, according to Pagasa.