Govt urged to scrap big irrigation projects and opt for small-scale local initiatives

Water has been a problematic issue for Thailand in recent years, with the country facing its biggest flooding crisis in decades in 2011 followed by severe droughts in 2015 and 2016.
In order to mitigate and prepare for the next water-related problems, the Department has proposed several big irrigation and dam projects, which will be initiated this year, as the Department insists the projects are necessary for better water management.
They include irrigation projects in the Yom River basin, the Wang Heab dam in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, the Mae Wong dam in Nakhon Sawan province, the Salween River water diversion project in Tak province, and the Mekong River water diversion project in Loei province.
Department director-general Sanchai Ketworrachai revealed that this year they would deal with several big and small irrigation project proposals in order to expand the country’s irrigation area by 380,000 rai (61,000 hectares) and increase the level of stored water by 400 million cubic metres.
Doing so will boost the capacity to manage water and better prepare the nation for unexpected water issues, he said.
“We have experienced many difficult times in the past because of water problems and the future is unpredictable because of climate change, so we have to prepare ourselves by investing in these irrigation projects, as they will be the tools for us to better manage water and ensure that we will have enough water always,” he said.
Sanchai stressed that the new irrigation projects were important to ensure the water security of the country, because the RID could not manage water without dams and irrigation projects and more dams meant more equipment for the department to regulate water.
“We are investing in these big irrigation projects according to the financial, legal, and public allowances. These projects may not be finished within this year because we have to carefully study and reduce the impacts [of them] as much as possible. We are also working hard to inform the people about the necessity of these projects for water security in the future,” he stated.
According to the RID, there will be much progress this year, including the department working with local authorities to survey and brief people on the progress of the Wang Heab dam to prepare for its slated ground-breaking in 2018.
Meanwhile, Hannarong Yaowalers, Thai-Water Partnerships chairman and a National Reform Council member, warned that the Department’s policy to invest in big irrigation projects was the wrong decision and he emphasised that building more dams was not the answer to better water management.
“We have already seen that the [existing] dams cannot guarantee good water management. Right now many dams in the northeastern region have started to run dry even though it is only the beginning of the dry season,” he said.
“We cannot only rely on water in the reservoirs and keep managing water the same way. We have to manage water from local areas and reverse the top-down policy.”
He stated that water problems in the past were the result of governments not listening to the people and not allowing them to participate in water management. As a result, he said irrigation projects did not suit local people’s needs and destroyed water ecosystems and thereby destroying the livelihoods of many people.
The prominent public sector water expert said that instead of constructing large irrigation projects, which would cause great impact on locals and the environment, the government should allow locals to participate in water management by using local wisdom and developing small-scale irrigation systems instead.
“In order to cope with changing weather patterns in the future, every community should have their own water resource and every household also should return to the traditional practice of having water containers in their home to collect the water from the rain for domestic use,” he said.
“This way we can collect the precipitation to use all year round, which will also prevent flash floods from heavy rain.”
For the water situation this year, Sanchai disclosed that based on information from the Meteorological Department, rain patterns were expected to be comparable with last year and there was no immediate threat of floods and droughts, although that was a long-term forecast so it may not be that accurate.