Ipo, Bustos dams discharge water

MALOLOS, Bulacan, Philippines — The Ipo and Bustos reservoirs in Bulacan discharged water on Saturday after the monsoon dumped heavy rainfall in the past few days.

Josephine Salazar, National Irrigation Administration chief for Central Luzon, told The STAR in a text message that Ipo Dam discharged 371.57 cubic meters per second (CMS) of water on Saturday night to its downstream river system, which finds its way to Bustos Dam.

The Bustos Dam, in turn, had an overflow water discharge rate of 412 CMS on deflated Rubber Gates 1,2, 4 and 6, according to the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office.

The PDRRMO said the Ipo Dam water level rose to 100.52 meters while that of Bustos Dam rose to 15.88 meters over the weekend.

It reported that Angat Dam also registered an increase of more than one meter in its water elevation – the first since the summer months.

From the PDRRMO monitoring report, Angat Dam’s water elevation at 6 a.m. yesterday was at 193.74 meters, or 1.86 meters higher compared to the 191.88-meter record on Saturday.

Angat Dam is a major source of potable water for Metro Manila and contributes 218 megawatts of hydropower to the Luzon Grid.

Bustos Dam provides irrigation water to 26,000 hectares of rice lands in Bulacan and parts of Pampanga.