By EUGENE ADIONG
BACOLOD City — Anticipating El Niño phenomenon late this year, the provincial government has requested for financial aid from the Department of Agriculture.
It has written the agency’s regional office, asking for P117 million for proposed small-scale irrigation projects in Negros Occidental, Engr. Igmedio Tabianan, provincial agriculturist, said.
Tabianan said that he and Gov. Alfredo Marañon Jr. last week went to regional Agriculture office to follow up the request and that the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist’s proposed El Niño mitigation plan is already with Marañon.
El Niño last hit the province in 2010.
The phenomenon is the unusual warming of ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, causing drought in the West Pacific and is sometimes associated with brush fires in Australia, according to the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
During El Niño, sea surface temperature is at least 0.5 degrees Celsius, lasting for an average of three months, according to a publication released by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies./PN
