Green algae, blue water add to fears over health of Southeast Asia's Mekong

[rooster59]

Green algae, blue water add to fears over health of Southeast Asia's Mekong

By Panu Wongcha-um and Kay Johnson

 

A fisherman shows the algae growing in Mekong river outside Loei, Thailand January 10, 2020. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

 

BUNGKHLA, Thailand/BANGKOK (Reuters) - When the normally murky brown Mekong River turned a brilliant blue late last year, villagers in northeastern Thailand were surprised.

 

Then, this week, unusually large patches of green algae appeared, clogging up nets and making it almost impossible to fish.

 

Both the Mekong's strange colour and the algae have heightened worries about the health of the river that more than 60 million people in Southeast Asia depend on for their livelihoods.

 

"This is unnatural," fisherman Tongchai Kodrak said of the algae and the blue waters, which both signal a lower level of life-bringing sediment in the water.

 

He says a bit of algae appears every dry season but this year it is more than anyone can remember.

 

GRAPHIC: Algae build-up turning the Mekong river blue

 

The year 2020 is shaping up to be crucial for the Mekong River, which is under threat from climate change and faces uncertain changes wrought by two new hydropower dams that have come online in Laos in the last three months.

 

Many fear the new Lao dams - the first on the Lower Mekong that generates most of the vast system's sediment - will impede the nutrient flow.

 

Scientists say the Mekong’s new blue colour – first seen in November in northern Thailand and now evident down the river into Cambodia - is caused by shallow, slower moving waters.

 

Normally, sediment flows all through the 2,390-km Lower Mekong, nourishing fishing grounds and farmlands as it flows in from China then winds past Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

 

It is the sediment that keeps the river a muddy brown, but when the water flow slows, the sediment can settle.

 

UNPREDICTABLE AND EXTREME

 

The fishers and farmers of the Thai village of Bungkhla say they have seen the Mekong gradually changing before their eyes in the past decade, with less predictable rainy and dry seasons and fewer, smaller fish.

 

But in the past year, the change has been more dramatic as a drought during the last rainy season, from May to October, extended into this dry season.

 

"I've never seen the river this dry," said Tongchai, 52, who has plied the river since he was a teenager.

 

The drought – which saw the Mekong's levels at lows not seen for 50 years – is fuelled by El Nino, a naturally occurring weather phenomenon related to warming seas that climate scientists predict will become more frequent as average global temperatures rise.

 

The Mekong’s lower regions are also endangered by rising seas threatening to inundate its delta in southern Vietnam.

Ocean levels are already increasing saline levels in parts of the river, rendering the water useless for irrigation and threatening native fish.

 

Climate change will mean more unpredictable and extreme weather, according to the Mekong River Commission, an intergovernmental organisation. That is bad news for farmers and fishermen who for centuries have relied on the river’s yearly ebb and flow.

 

Environmental activists argue that while hydropower does not add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere in the way coal-fired plants do, the region’s planned hydro projects nevertheless represent a huge threat to the river.

 

Advocates of hydropower argue that the fast-growing region needs electricity and dams with reservoirs are useful in controlling floods and storing water during droughts.

 

DAMMED RIVER

 

How much of the changing Mekong is caused by climate change and how much by damming is at the centre of a controversy surrounding hydropower development as Laos, backed by Thailand’s state electricity company, and now Vietnam’s state power company, moves ahead with plans to build nine new hydropower dams on the Mekong.

 

The first dam, the 1,285-megawatt Xayaburi Dam, began commercial operations in October. The second, the 260-MW Don Sahong near the Laos-Cambodia border, began supplying electricity this week.

 

While 11 dams upstream in China have affected the water’s flow in the past decade, the new Lao dams are worrisome because the plains of Laos are where the Mekong begins to pick up most of the sediment that feeds the system, said fisheries researcher Tuanthong Jatagate.

 

A professor of agriculture at Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani University, Tuanthong says there is no doubt that Xayaburi’s new operations have contributed to the recent changes.

 

“There are many factors overall, but the main one is that the Xayaburi holds water by blocking the flow for electricity generation,” Tuanthong said.

 

Satellite photos of Xayaburi from Jan. 3 by Planet Labs Inc. showed the blue-water phenomenon was visible on both sides of the dam, though the image did not make clear how far upsteam it extended.

 

In addition, environmentalists say dam-building blocks the migration of dozens of fish species that feed millions of people, especially in Cambodia.

 

Xayaburi’s main developer, Thailand’s CK Power PCL, has declined requests for interviews from Reuters and did not respond to written questions sent this week.

 

CK Power, a subsidiary of Thai construction company CH. Karnchang Public Company Limited, has spent 6 billion baht ($200 million) on “fish ladders” and sediment gates that the company has said will ensure the Mekong’s fragile ecosystem will not be harmed.

 

But activists say those systems are untested.

 

The controversy should gain new clarity later this year once the Mekong River Commission begins testing water downstream of Xayaburi for sediment and examining dams' fish channels.

 

In the meantime, villagers are keeping a watchful eye on the water and the weather.

 

In Bungkhla, fishermen like Tongchai don't go out on the water so much any more. They say they mostly catch algae.

 

"There have been fewer fish in the past few months and some types have disappeared," Tongchai said.

 

(Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Robert Birsel)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-01-11

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[holy cow cm]

More like damned river. Let’s take it to the beginning and put all the huge blame on the ignorant selfish Chinese government who cares about no one. Then we can take the last bit straight to the junta controlled Egat which turned a blind eye to the life of the river as well. The river is essentially in its death bed. 

[Oziex1]

So sad, the poor management of our water resources. 

It's a pressing global issue.

[tifino]

... funny how just a week ago there was all the hype of the ummm 'edible' green whatever it was on the river - that everyone was wanting to get hold of, so to sell to everyone else...

[Geoffggi]

Thailand should be careful who they really count as friendly nations...

[Ireland32]

1 hour ago, Geoffggi said:

Thailand should be careful who they really count as friendly nations...

Just filling pockets , then will become a province, like all of SE Asia 

[ParkerN]

1 hour ago, Geoffggi said:

Thailand should be careful who they really count as friendly nations...

Thailand counts as a friend anyone who says the right thing or smiles at a Thai. They never think that other people are just as accomplished liars and cheats as the Thais are.

 

Their decision-making and discrimination skills are very poor in my estimation 'My friend is anyone who helps me to feel good about myself' - which they will do until they don't. SE Asian people are all the same; they all come from the same seed stock and they will all come a cropper because they aren't as good as they think they are, with the possible exception of the Chinese, who will likely end up owning the whole farm, because, perhaps uniquely, they do know how good they are.

 

Edited January 11, 2020 by ParkerN

[Isaan sailor]

China has taken Mekong waters upriver.

China #1 suspect for hot money inflows.

Somehow, the government remains close friends with the ChiComs.

When will this change?

[ParkerN]

14 minutes ago, Isaan sailor said:

China has taken Mekong waters upriver.

China #1 suspect for hot money inflows.

Somehow, the government remains close friends with the ChiComs.

When will this change?

When the Chinese stop kissing Thai bottoms. They're on a 'win friends and influence people' crusade at the moment, that won't last forever and when they get serious about the money Thailand has borrowed, well then there will be a number of Thais reflecting on their wisdom as they plummet earthward from a great height. Anyone who thought the Tom Yum Goong crisis was unique is going to be disappointed.

 

[ratcatcher]

"The word Mekong translates in Lao as "Mother of Rivers". As one Lao told me: "Its water is our blood." ... The French colonized Laos mainly because they hoped the Mekong would link them to the fabled riches of China. The upper reaches of the river proved unnavigable."

The Mother of Rivers has been gang raped and left to die by greed and mismanagement by all its neighbors. China being the gang leader.

[WeekendRaider]

nothing on other water issues elsewhere..... in a neighboring country ‘down under’ The Guardian in the UK reports increasing social media and news coverage blaming “arsonists” for a more extreme swing of the Indian Dipole climate wise, not merely weather wise.... they cannot call their farmers uneducated or also blame land neighbors so they are stuck with The Arsonists are to blame.... not anything having to do with burning a few billion years of the real solar power... plant “fossils” in just a few decades.  when do folks stop blaming others?  all other others for what really is no GLOBAL action on or for any of this?

Edited January 11, 2020 by WeekendRaider

[kirbi53]

So the Mekong is choking and gasping for breath

We are also choking and gasping for breath

They blamed Yingluck for the flooding of Bangkok

[ThomasThBKK]

15 hours ago, Isaan sailor said:

China has taken Mekong waters upriver.

China #1 suspect for hot money inflows.

Somehow, the government remains close friends with the ChiComs.

When will this change?

And at the same time they accuse the opposition as being communists - you can't make that stuff up.