By Fred Amora
Associate Editor
The Bohol Standard
The moment of truth has come. Water is finally released into distribution canals of the controversial P3.6-B Bayongan Dam. But will water reach its targeted areas of 5,300 hectares rice lands in the towns of San Miguel, Trinidad and Ubay?
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo herself led the commissioning of the Bayongan Dam, Friday, October 12, activating an irrigation facility eyed to boost Bohol’s dream of emerging as the rice basket in Central Visayas.
The Bohol Irrigation Project Phase II, known as the Bayongan Dam in San Miguel town, is about 88 kilometers from Tagbilaran City. Its water supply partly depends from spill over of an earlier dam project in Malinao, Pilar (BHIP-1). Unlike other dams, the two facilities wholly impound rainwater and are not connected to any major water source or river.
Arriving at 10:00 am by presidential chopper from Benito Ebuen Airport in Mactan, Cebu, the President and her party landed directly in San Miguel where she led the opening of the main valves from the facility’s main dam to the canal distribution network. The President’s coming was her fourth time in Bohol this year.
Then she led the unveiling of the marker of this P3.684B project funded by both the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and loan from the Japan Bank of International Cooperation (JBIC).
Irrigation officials stressed that the P3.6B project could be irrigating some 5,300 hectares of farmlands summing up to P574.7M annual net incremental increase in rice and other crop production as direct irrigation benefits.
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