A top official of the National Irrigation Administration-Upper Pampanga River Integrated Irrigation System (NIA-UPRIIS) issued this statement even as the water levels in the Pampanga River and Rio Chico River rose to frightening heights last Tuesday.

Tropical depression "Henry" caused the river water to rise as it continued to dump rains in Central Luzon in the past three days.

Heavy damage to infrastructure and agricultural crops was expected as "Henry" spawned floods in this city and several towns in the province.

Gov. Tomas N. Joson III suspended classes on the elementary and secondary levels in all schools as the Storm Signal 1 was raisd over Nueva Ecija.

Except for relief and disaster-related services, work in the provincial government at Palayan city was also suspended.

Joson has fielded dump trucks at lowlying areas to help in the evacuation of flood-threatened residents.

As of last Tuesday noon, the La PazZaragoza stretch of the Tarlac-Nueva Ecija road remained impassable to all forms of vehicles.

Engineer Antonio Nangel, NIA-UPRIIS operations manager, said the water level in the Pantabangan dam was 211.6 meters as of noon last Tuesday.

Nangel said, "we are safe, and no water will be released this time."

"We assure that we will not release water from the dam now that we need more water to service the dry-season crops," he also said.

"We still need to conserve up to 10 meters more to reach the spilling level of 221 meters," he added.

He noted that the rising level of the water systems here was brought about by the heavy volume of rains dumped by "Henry," which came at the heels of typhoons "Glenda," "Florita," and "Boying."

Recalling that in the latter part of 2004 when a series of four killer typhoons hit Aurora, Quezon and Nueva Ecija, Nangel said that the dam averaged an increase of 15 to 20 centimeters in height of water inflow per day at that time.