This week the Ubolratana dam, the first hydroelectric power project developed in the Northeast, ran dry. Opened in 1966 on the Pong River in Khon Kaen, the dam is the victim of mismanagement of the irrigation system and of global climate change.
Ubolratana dam, which is administered by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, is an earth-core rock-fill dam. Its catchment area is 410 square kilometres with a maximum capacity of 2,559,000 cubic metres. When the project was initiated in the early 1960s, it was conceived as multi-purpose in nature, providing electricity generation, fisheries, flood control, irrigation and transportation, and to serve as a tourist attraction. Today, its useable storage is zero, with the risk that pumping any more water will affect the dam's integrity.
As the dam's three hydroelectric turbines are idle, their 25,200 MW capacity reduced to zero, there is the likelihood the dam's annual 57 GwH average output of electricity will be sorely reduced. Moreover, the fisheries reliant on the Ubolratana dam reservoir are dying and its role in irrigation is abandoned.
Other dams have experienced similar problems. These include Bhumibol dam, which opened in 1964 on the Ping River in Tak, with a capacity of 13,462,000,000 cubic metres; Sirindhorn dam, which opened in 1971 on the Lam Dom Noi River in Ubon Ratchathani, with a capacity of 1,966,000,000 cubic metres; Chulabhorn dam, which opened in 1972 on the Phrom River in Chaiyaphum, with a capacity of 165,000,000 cubic metres; Sirikit dam, which opened in 1974 on the Nan River in the North, with a capacity of 9,510,000,000; Srinakarind dam, which opened in 1980 on the Khwae Yai River in Kanchanaburi, with a capacity of 17,745,000,000 cubic metres; and Vajiralongkorn dam, which opened in 1984 on the Khwae Noi River, also in Kanchanaburi, with a capacity of 8,100,000 cubic metres. In all cases, the primary purpose is electricity generation, followed by water flow control to avoid flooding and provide irrigation.
However, in all cases these dams are heavily stressed. According to the Hydro and Agro Informatics Institute, as of April 3 this year, 16 dams are at critically low levels of usable reservoir storage. Of the total, Ubolratana dam stands at 0%, Bhumibol dam is at 4%, Sirindhorn dam is at 10%, Srinakarind dam is at 11%, Sirikit dam is at 12%, and Chulabhorn dam is at 13%, while Vajiralongkorn dam is at 14%. With the rainy season traditionally starting in June, the dams are facing a catastrophe.
For Thais, this combination of a man-made natural disaster due to rising levels of greenhouse gases is particularly poignant. Severe drought deals a heavy blow to farmers. Sugar cane and vegetable crops have also been affected. The cumulative effect is the country is facing a loss of hundreds of millions of baht in lost crops.
Despite the social impacts of eviction and forest destruction, there was strong rationale for dams for a semi-tropical country during the 1960s to the 1980s. At the time, solar electricity was in its infancy, and the main alternative, imported coal, was expensive.
The dams provided comparatively cheap electricity. In addition, water management and irrigation were championed as without them, people's livelihoods can be destroyed. They cannot produce cash crops and earn enough money to make choices about their future as with dignity.
But the growing impact of global climate change has threatened the country's dams and the capital city while Bangkok is at risk of the twin dangers of drought and sea-level rise. In such circumstances, the government must abandon its senseless pursuit of ultra-advanced supercritical coal technology, which would still emit two thirds of the CO2 emitted by existing coal plants, for its planned power plants in Songkhla and Krabi.
To replace coal, the government must explore the benefits of other types of alternative energy, including nuclear fusion, and adopt a solar roadmap to make use of the sun, via photovoltaic cells, which together with emerging technologies for electricity storage are making grid-level solar power viable.
Now that water is no longer sustainable, such a course would provide for community and urban solar farms together with centralised multi-hundred megawatt plants.
John Draper is Project Officer, Isan Culture Maintenance and Revitalisation Programme (ICMRP), College of Local Administration (COLA), Khon Kaen University. Peerasit Kamnuansilpa, Phd, is founder and former dean of the College of Local Administration, Khon Kaen University.