﻿THE PHILIPPINE 



Journal of Science 



D. General Biology, Ethnology, 

 and Anthropology 



Vol. IX APRIL, 1914 No. 2 



NOTES ON IRRIGATION AND COOPERATIVE IRRIGATION 

 SOCIETIES IN ILOCOS NORTE 1 



By Emerson B. Christie 

 (From the Museum, Bureau of Science, Manila, P. I.) 



One plate 



Reports of the Bureau of Public Works state that the Prov- 

 ince of Ilocos Norte has some 15,000 hectares under a fairly- 

 satisfactory degree of irrigation. Besides this land, there is 

 a considerable area irrigated only during the season of trans- 

 planting and growing rice ; that is to say, the wet season. 



Irrigation works of some sort are to be found in all the 

 municipalities in the province. Bangui and Nagpartian, the two 

 northernmost towns in the province, have together some 1,500 

 hectares of rice land under irrigation. About nine-tenths of 

 this land is under irrigation only during the wet season, owing 

 to the imperfection of the irrigation works. Neither town has 

 dams of a permanent nature. Diversions are made usually by 

 temporary dams of bamboo and rock from 0.5 meter to 3 

 meters high. These are crudely constructed, and are either 

 completely destroyed each year or require considerable repairing. 

 Some of the 27 ditches in these towns have no headgate nor 

 wasteway provisions, and as a consequence their channels have 

 been cut so deep as to leave portions of the lands they once 

 watered above water. The most ambitious irrigation work to 

 be seen in this part of the province is the heading of an old 

 canal which was destroyed about a generation ago. It had a 



1 1 am indebted to the courtesy of the Bureau of Public Works for the 

 data on the extent of irrigation in Ilocos Norte which appear in this article. 

 126083 99 





