As canals have shrunk, floods and drought have grown
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The recent alarming water crisis makes me nostalgic for my childhood. Sixty years ago I was a dek baan nok (country boy) in Chachoengsao, living amid rice fields fed by an extensive network of canals built by the farsighted Kings Rama IV and V.
As a young boy it was not easy to swim across these majestic, wide canals. A few years ago I went back to my childhood home and was dismayed to discover that many of these canals are now so shallow and narrow that I can nearly jump across them. These once-efficient irrigation channels have lost at least 80 per cent of their capacity. Had they instead been maintained and expanded, floods and droughts would be more easily averted.
Prasan Stianrapapongs
