MANILA (March 1, 2010) -- The threat of the El Niño drought has prompted calls for emergency actions including the declaration of a power crisis in Mindanao and the convening of the National Security Council.

Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes has proposed to President Arroyo to invoke her emergency powers under the law to address the power crisis in Mindanao, which has been hit by outages as two major hydro-electric plants are forced to cut power generation because of the El Niño.

In congress, Rep. Rodolfo Plaza of Agusan del Sur wants the National Security Council to convene and map out plans to ensure food security, warning of widespread hunger and instability if El Niño worsens.

Plaza, who is running for senator, also called for a summit to prevent food shortages, saying that El Niño threatens the country with not only power supply crisis but also hunger.

El Niño has caused a drastic cut in power generation of Agus and Pulangui hydro-electric plants by 80 percent and 90 percent, Reyes said.

Hydro-electric power plants account usually for 53 percent of the total power generation in Mindanao. This was reduced to 26 percent last week and further down to 20 percent during the weekend.

As of Saturday, the hydro electric plants’ combined capacity has declined to 215 MW from 982 MW. As a result, rolling outages hit the following areas: one-hour brownouts in Davao City, 2 hours in Iligan City, 4 to 5 hours in Cagayan de Oro and General Santos City and, 7 hours in Zamboanga City. Mati town of Davao Oriental had no power for 24 hours Sunday.

Meanwhile, the National Power Corp. and the local government of Iligan are in talks to restart the Iligan diesel power plant, which has been shut down over unresolved real property tax issues.

Barring force majeure and other adverse turn of events, the Visayas grid will not have any supply problem until 2014, Energy sources said.

Since the onset of El Niño, farm and fishery losses have piled up to P20 billion, not counting the business and opportunities foregone, according to Paras.

“El Niño is a disaster worse than typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng. This early, damages due to drought are estimated to reach P10 to P20 billion. We are also facing an acute power and water crises. The National Disaster Coordinating Council, Department of Health and Department of Social Welfare and Development must take part in finding solutions to this problem. It’s always better to be prepared than sorry,” Plaza pointed out.

Staple and fish farms have started to dry up since the onset of the El Niño. Plants, animals and even fishes had died under the scorching heat. Plaza said this is an indication of worse conditions to come since government weather experts predicted that the long dry spell would last until June.

This year’s El Niño phenomenon is expected to affect 543,844.8 hectares of rice lands, 273,411.6 hectares of cornfields and 16,992 hectares of fishery areas.