Bangkok Post Journalist Joins Mekong School Field Visit to Pak Moon Dam

Vasana Chinvarakorn, one of Thailand's most prominant journalists covering environmental and human rights issues, recently joined the EarthRights Mekong School on a field visit to Pak Mun dam and Huay Ra Ha reservoir in Ubon province in northern Thailand. Below is the article she wrote about her trip, which was recently featured in the Bangkok Post.

A Mistake For All But Egat To See

Bangkok Post
Friday, August 10, 2007
COMMENTARY

By Vasana Chinvarakorn

I was at a loss for words. What the man said hit exactly at the crux of the issue: the Pak Moon Dam is a big mistake. We were munching on sticky rice and side dishes at breakfast when my new-found Vietnamese friend made the comment.

Nguyen Duc Anh had just come back from a village near the Moon River where he'd spent the night at the headman's house.

It was part of the Mekong School programme, wherein the Vietnamese researcher and other ''students'' from China and Southeast Asia were being given the opportunity to learn about changes to the region's longest river, and to the people who live along it. Naturally, the Pak Moon Dam is a classic case study, a must for the curriculum.

At Nong Pho village, Anh and fellow classmates spent a day and night, talking with the Isan folk, observing their ways of life. They also had a try at catching fish. But there were very few to be caught, given that the Pak Moon Dam, a huge block of concrete that straddles the Moon River, remains shut.

The locals there were going through a hard time, he noted. Anh himself managed to catch a couple of shrimp, which he said were dubbed ''Egat shrimp'' by the fisherman who chaperoned him. They are not an indigenous species, the fisherman told him, but have been released into the Moon courtesy of the Egat, perhaps as an alternative source of food for the villagers.

Such an instance shows a convoluted, only-Thai-authority-can-devise form of logic. You destroy the existing (read: freely-given) natural resources in order to justify spending huge amounts of taxpayer money on something that is a poor substitute for the original. When the Pak Moon Dam was completed, and the migration of fish from the Mekong was found to have dropped severely, a ''fish ladder'' was touted as the cure-all answer (only to backfire and become a subject of bitter jokes years later). Then they claimed the restrained placid water was fit for raising fish in baskets, a new mode of living that effectively saw fishermen transformed into customers of agro-conglomerates which supplied the fishfood and chemicals. Finally, the occasional release of millions of fish and shrimp into the river _ the most recent of which took place yesterday _ is another example of how generous the government has been with our tax money.

And the level of their stubbornness, er, consistency, has been remarkable. Since last year, millions of baht have been poured into the province to build water-pump stations and irrigation canals, supposedly to divert water from the dam's reservoir to feed thousands of rai of rice fields. So the hydro-electric mega-scheme has morphed into a dam primarily for irrigation purposes. It has to, since research by the World Commission on Dams, and later Ubon Ratchathani University, has proved how very little electricity has been generated by the six-billion-baht dam (about 20-40 megawatts instead of the originally planned 136 MWs). Intriguingly, for the 10-plus years since the dam has been in operation, less than 20% of the surrounding farm area has benefited from the irrigated water, ironically due to the high electricity fees for pumping water.

As the new irrigation system has yet to start, it is not known how many farmers will actually make use of it.

Still, Egat has pointed to the need for irrigation as the reason to keep the dam gates shut. The previous cabinet's resolution which allowed fish from the Mekong to migrate into the Moon River for four months a year has been conveniently dropped. Although the provincial governor recently agreed to open the dams gates by this Sunday, there is no guarantee if he will actually fulfil the promise, or for how long. Here, any scientific findings are deemed worthless. Only logic, in its basest, most warped and arbitrary manifestation, counts in the minds of the powers-that-be.

So when Anh expressed puzzlement, it only made my face and ears turn red. He said, ''I really don't understand. There are so many intelligent people in your country. There must be a few at Egat, too. How could they have come up with such a project?''

No, I do not have any answer to that one. Indeed, trying to get an explanation might be another mistake.

Vasana Chinvarakorn is a senior writer for Outlook, Bangkok Post.

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Related News: International Rivers Network, ERI's partner orgnization, campaigns to raise awareness for the Pak Moon Dam.