His Majesty the King is deeply concerned about the current drought and has specifically asked a close aide to investigate the situation at Mae Ngat dam, one of the main suppliers to Chiang Mai city.
The rainy season should have begun already and 60 of the 76 provinces of Thailand now face the worst drought for 20 years, reports the ‘Northern Part’ Thai language newspaper.
Almost 7.5 million people are facing serious water shortages and 522,563 rai of crops have been spoiled. One essential rice harvest has been lost from 63,133 rai, and another postponed.
Government aid of 579m baht has been allocated to farmers as compensation, but is generally considered to be insufficient.
Over 1,000 water tankers have been used to distribute water at government expense and repairs are being made to 4,960 dams. Chiang Mai is one of the northern provinces to which 713 pumps have been allocated by the Royal Irrigation Department.
The 17 northern provinces have a total of 7,729 villages – comprising 1.7 million people – suffering badly, but no help has reached them yet, the paper reported.
New dam plan for Ping River
A budget of 400 million baht has been allocated to build a new dam in the Ping River south of the Police Region 5 HQ. Negotiations on access and compensation are being held by the irrigation department with residents on both sides of the river.
The project will take over 2 years to complete, and include 8 sluice gates to feed up to 5 million cubic meters of stored water to surrounding areas, as and when required.
Chiang Mai is at “medium risk” of a drought, the Director General of the national Water Resource Department stated on the 2nd day of the annual water-throwing holiday.
As tens of thousands of litres of water washed down the drains of the province, Kasemsan Chinnavaso said that Chiang Mai, like Lamphun, wasamong 33 provinces at medium risk, while our northerly neighbour Chiang Rai was at “high risk.”
The average rainfall for the past week had been only 8.8 millimetres nationally, he said, and the highest temperature of 43 deg had been registered in both Tak and Kanchanaburi. Forty-one degrees has been seen on some Chiang Mai thermometers.
Our main reservoirs of Mae Kuang and Mae Ngat are well above the levels seen immediately before the last major drought of 2005, when water was cut off to different parts of the city at different times of the day and night. That drought cost the government 7.5 billion baht, said Kasemsan, as it hit 71 of the nation’s 76 provinces.
Today is officially the final day of the “water war”, which originated as a gentle, ceremonial washing of hands of older people to show respect and to encourage the rains to come early.
Editor’s note: There have been renewed calls for the government to restrict water wastage to one or two days at most when drought threatens. This was most effective in Lamphun in 2005 when the then Mayor, Praphat Poocharoen, successfully appealed on behalf of farmers to restrict water throwing to two days.
Article contributed by David Hardcastle, Copyright David Hardcastle 2010
“Setting fire to forests is a national sport in this country,” Jacques Cavin told a Chiang Mai audience on July 30th.
Referring to the controversial “slash and burn” technique of agriculture, he declared: “We don’t do that. We buy produce from the forest to make fertiliser without chemicals.”
Jacques was describing Natural Agriculture Co Ltd, the business of his wife Khun Uraiwan, which combines Swiss expertise with local ingredients with the aim of reducing Thailand’s reliance on chemical fertiliser.
“Thailand uses 4 million tons of chemical fertiliser each year. The soil is eroded and I believe the country is now going through what Europe did 20 years ago” said Jacques.
Khun Uraiwan and her team use produce from 16 square kilometers of forest and 7 rai of garden in Ban Thi.
“We obtained Board Of Investment status in less than one month, and everything is going very quickly because people know this is needed” added Jacques. “We give people the recipe for our fertiliser. Please feel free to copy us!” he invited.
Jacques was speaking at the monthly dinner meeting of the SKAL international tourism club at the Holiday Inn.
For more information, e-mail: jcavin@bluewin.ch
This article is Copyright © MyChiangMai 2009, no reproduction without prior permission.
