UPRIIS is one of the government agencies under the National Irrigation Administration. It all started on May 1969 when the Republic Act 5499 or the Upper Pampanga River Project Act was approved by the Philippine Congress. The act authorized the construction of the Pantabangan Dam and its related structures and facilities and the approval of local counterpart funds. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development or IBRD approved a 34 million US dollar loan to the Philippine Government on August 18, 1969 to finance the foreign-exchange requirement of the project. Started on March 3, 1971, the Pantabangan Dam was completed in August 1974 and the whole facility was inaugurated on September 7, 1974. It was also during that time when the initial operation of the project was started and the Upper Pampanga River Project became officially known as the Upper Pampanga River Integrated Irrigation Systems. The Provinces covered by UPRIIS consists mostly of the whole Nueva Ecija Province and parts of Pampanga, Bulacan, and Tarlac. As of Calendar Year 2015, UPRIIS serves 119,216.49 hectares which comprises of 4 Provinces, 23 Municipalities, 5 Cities, and 452 Barangay. The main source of water supply for UPRIIS is the Pantabangan Dam with a reservoir area of 8,420 hectares. A total of about 3 billion cubic meters of water can be stored in the reservoir. Aside from providing irrigation and flood control, the Pantabangan Dam also generates electricity that supplies power to the different provinces of the region through the Pantabangan and Masiway hydroelectric power plants. Started on March 1974, the Pantabangan Power Plant was completed on April of 1977. The two 60 MW generators add around 70,000 kilowatts of dependable capacity to the NPC Luzon grid generating some 232 million Kilowatt-hours of electric energy annually. About 5 kilometers downstream of the Pantabangan Dam is the Masiway Dam. This dam was designed to regulate and control the peaking discharge of the main dam into uniform flows for irrigation purposes. The water flowing from the Masiway re-regulation dam passes through the Rizal Dam. And from there, the water will be distributed in the areas under the five divisions of UPRIIS for irrigation purposes.
UPRIIS TOTAL CANAL LENGTH:
Diversion Canal - 75.84 km
Length of Main Canal - 197.36 km
Length of Lateral - 1,455.73 km
Lined Canal - 467.14 km
Earth Canal - 523.845 km
Length of Service Road - 1,563.95 km
Length of Access Road - 368 km
Number of Turnouts - 4,550
The main base of operations for UPRIIS is located at Maharlika Highway, Cabanatuan City Nueva Ecija.
