Looming drought may bring water, power outages to Philippines

A prolonged dry spell in the Philippines has raised the possibility of water shortages and power cuts in the capital and surrounding areas, officials said Thursday.

President Gloria Arroyo had asked the public to save water and ordered all agencies to prepare for a drought if rains do not come by August, the presidential palace said.


Falling water levels had affected the operations of hydroelectric dams that provide power to metropolitan Manila and surrounding areas, forcing the state-run National Power Corp. (Napocor) to introduce daily three-hour outages which started Wednesday, the firm said.

“We are in fact already undertaking (cloud) seeding operations over our dams to stimulate precipitation to produce rain. However, we must at least have natural clouds to produce positive results from the seeding,” Napocor said.

AFP