His order came on the heels of the recent floods in Northern and Central Luzon brought about by the overflowing of dams prompted by heavy rains spawned by back-to-back typhoons Pedring and Quiel.
Paje wants the National Water Resources Board (NWRB), an attached agency of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, to come up with a new set of guidelines in the face of extreme weather events which experts attribute to climate change.
“I strongly agree with the position that we review our protocol on dam management. Climate change has caused every imaginable transformations in our environment, from sea level rise to irregular weather patterns, frequency and strength of typhoons, flood course and high precipitation, which now constitute the ‘new normal,”’ Paje said in a statement.
According to Paje, the massive flooding the country has experienced all point to the need to address not only the issue of coordination among concerned government agencies but also their decision-making processes.
“The new dam-management protocol should fill up all loopholes in coordination, as well as in implementing emergency measures to avoid situations such as what happened in Bulacan,” Paje stressed.
NWRB Deputy Executive Director Nathaniel Santos explained the technical working group on Angat Dam operations is currently implementing the 2010 version of the dam’s protocol, originally formulated in 1998.
The protocol calls for NWRB to take charge of allocating water supply to the National Irrigation Administration (Nia) for the irrigation of farmlands in Bulacan and Pampanga, and the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System for domestic supply of Metro Manila—that is, if the dam’s water level is 210 meters above sea level and below, Santos explained.
However, once the dam’s water level reaches above the threshold, Santos stressed the National Power Corp., NIA and Pagasa implement another protocol.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council said the two howlers combined were worse than Ondoy and Pepeng which caused massive flooding in Metro Manila in 2009.
(Jonathan Mayuga)
