CITY OF MALOLOS — The start of the irrigation supply coming from Bustos Dam has been delayed by one month due rehabilitation works on its Rubber Gate Number 5.

Josephine Salazar, National Irrigation Administration director for Central Luzon, has confirmed to ARKIPELAGO NEWS BULACAN in a text message that Bustos Dam will start releasing irrigation supply for this dry cropping season on January 2 next year until May 15 this year.

Bustos Dam provides irrigation water to some 25,000 hectares of irrigated ricelands in Bulacan and parts of Pampanga.

Last year, Bustos Dam started releasing irrigation supply for the dry cropping season on December 1 until April 15 this year.

The major source of irrigation supply from the said dam comes from Angat Dam and a minimum volume comes from the local flow from its upstream Angat river system.

Salazar said that rehabilitation works on the Rubber Gate No. 5 of Bustos Dam started this past month of November and is expected to be completed by the end of December .

Due to the rehabilitation works on Bustos Dam, the excess water released in the last five days by Angat Dam cannot be preserved by the former for the dry cropping season.

Records from the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office of Bulacan showed that Angat Dam’s water elevation yesterday morning was at 212.90 meter that is almost a meter above its normal high water level 212 meter and was releasing a volume of 73 cubic meter per second (CMS) on its downstream river system that is being absorbed by Ipo Dam.

The latter then discharges a total of 145.50 CMS of water towards Bustos Dam raising its water elevation to 15.84 that is 1.51 meters below its spilling level of 17.35 meter.

Due to the rehabilitation works on Bustos Dam, the water coming from Angat Dam cannot be preserved for use in the coming dry cropping season despite the ongoing El Niño weather disturbance and has to discharge 120 CMS towards its downstream river system.

File photo: Mon Lazaro