Farmers in Laos are putting pressure on the dam operator to release water for irrigation.

[ASEAN NOW]

 

Villagers near a dam in northern Laos are requesting that the dam's owner release water to prevent their rice terraces from drying out, citing an agreement reached with downstream towns when the dam was erected.

 

The Laos-based Nong Hai Company owns and operates the 24.6 megawatt Nam Thea Dam in Xieng Khouang's northern province. It is one of a slew of dams erected by the landlocked country to generate electricity for export to neighboring countries and internal use.

 

The dam in Nam Thea village has disrupted the natural flow of water, forcing farmers from nine villages downstream to battle to keep their rice paddies wet.

 

“We need water to irrigate our fields,” says the farmer. A villager living near the dam told RFA's Lao Service that all of the crops are dry and decaying.

 

“Upstream farmers have access to water, but those of us downstream are impacted by the dam. We don't have enough water for farming, so we're not sure what we'll do if the dam doesn't release water,” said one villager.

 

The dam was built in 2019 and opened to the public in January of this year. Rice could be sown at any time before building began, according to the villager, and there was never a shortage of water for farming purposes.

 

“Villagers will not be able to sow rice this year due to a lack of water. Many villages have been damaged, and their rice plants have all died, and their other crops aren't growing as well as they used to,” another villager told RFA.

Nong Hai is not fulfilling the MOU it signed before construction began, according to a third resident, which promised that the dam must deliver water for villagers' farms all year.

 

On Aug. 14, a large number of concerned villagers presented a list of demands for Nong Hai to a local government office.

 

The farmers demanded that Nong Hai adhere to the terms of the agreed MOU, which calls for the dam to release water for agriculture, halt producing electricity so that they can utilize the water for irrigation, and pay them for their entire crop loss if the water is not released.

 

The people said they would not be liable if the corporation refused and “something happened” to the dam.

 

Authorities were investigating the issue, according to a local official, but the dam was so minor that it was unlikely to be the source of the downstream village's water problems.

 

Farmers upstream are consuming too much water, according to a Nong Hai official, and the business is looking into it.

 

Laos has built dozens of hydropower dams on the Mekong and its tributaries, and is planning to build another 50 as part of a plan to become the "Battery of Southeast Asia," exporting the electricity it generates to other Southeast Asian countries, namely Thailand.

 

The Lao government sees power generation as a way to help the country's economy, however the dam projects are divisive due to locals being displaced without proper compensation, environmental impact, and dubious financial and electricity demand agreements.