Cabinet nod sought for expansion of floodwater retention project

Following the success in using floodwater retention fields to relieve the flood situation in the Yom River Basin during the flooding season this year, the Royal Irrigation Department (RID) has proposed creating additional floodwater retention fields. The proposals were placed before the mobile Cabinet meeting in Sukhothai on Tuesday.
RID acting director-general Thongplew Kongchan revealed that the department planned to have an additional 117,000 rai of floodwater retention fields for the next flooding season, which will increase the capacity to store another 150 million cubic metres of water.
“The success of the floodwater retention fields under the Bang Rakam Model project this year proved that it could significantly reduce flooding problems in the lower Chao Phraya River Basin, and also reduce the severe flooding in Sukhothai. This would reduce the government’s burden to compensate for damage caused by flooding,” Thongplew said.
During the first year of implementing the floodwater retention fields, the RID provided irrigation to farmers in the flood retention area from April 1 in order to allow the farmers to grow their rice crop earlier than usual and let them harvest their crop by early August so as to be able to use the vacant fields to store floodwater.
Thongplew stated of the 265,000 rai of land used for the Bang Rakam Model project, 258,400 rai of land were used for farming. All these paddy fields were harvested by July and these lands were then used for storing up to 400 million cubic metres of floodwater from August.
After the flooding season, around 100 million cubic metres of water were left in the fields for agricultural use during the dry season starting from December, he explained.
The RID said that if the Cabinet approves the expansion of the Bang Rakam Model floodwater retention fields, a total of 382,000 rai of land would be used for the project with the capacity to hold 550 million cubic metres of water.