PANTABANGAN, Nueva Ecija – They thirst no more. Residents of Barangay Conversion, the biggest village of this town, finally harvested rice crops and will now enjoy year-round irrigation services with the construction of the P298-million Teruvian dam.
Village Chair Wilfredo Riparip said his constituents would even venture to onion production which made millions for farmers in other Nueva Ecija towns last summer.
Riparip said the mini-dam has initially flush out water for 170 hectares of land that used to be good only for cogon. “It made the land productive that drew the silver line for us,” he said.
But some farmers were skeptical, said Juanito Jampil, provincial irrigation officer of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA). A Teruvian dam refers to a free-fall dam wherein irrigation water falls freely from a mini-dam and connected to a stilling pool using high-density polyethylene pipes.
Engineer Martin Eduarte, NIA regional designer, said that this is made possible by force of gravity which pulls water from the river upward into the stilling pool.
Billy Soriano, president of the irrigators’ association in Barangay Conversion, said 98 farmers now benefit from the project. “They are now planning to venture into onions with water now available.”
He said up to 200 farmers in the area will benefit eventually once the irrigation facility’s two other phases are fully completed.
Manuel Collado, NIA regional irrigation manager for Central Luzon, said a total of 650 hectares of farmlands will be supplied year-round irrigation with the dam’s completion. The construction started in Januray 2010.
Marcelino Santos, assistant regional director, said this type of dam is most suited in the barangay since the current there is strong and the slopes are stiffer.
Conversion, Pantabangan’s largest barangay covering an area of 6,000 hectares, belonged to the original barangays of the old township which was submerged to pave the way for the construction of the World bank-funded Pantabangan dam in the 70s.
The dam now irrigates 102,000 hectares of agricultural lands in Central Luzon but not a single drop of water flows to Conversion which was relocated one kilometer upstream and was isolated from the rest of the barangays.
Antonio Reyes, former president of the NIA Employees Association and a resident of this town, said that since Conversion was an “outcast” from the Pantabangan dam, he and other officials of the association asked NIA last year to finance the construction of the mini-dam so farmers in the rain-fed area would receive irrigation.
Collado, with then-NIA administrator Carlos Salazar, approved the funding for the project which was finally realized when Antonio Nangel was appointed NIA administrator by President Aquino.
Nangel released P110 million for the project’s three phases. Mayor Romeo Borja Sr. also provided a counterpart funding from the municipal government equivalent to 30 percent of the project’s direct cost.
Nangel has also promised to provide post harvest facilities to assist farmers in their post-production.
