Drought intensifies across Thailand

[jvs]

A motocy would stop running pretty quik without cooling.

[thailien8]

This is a more serious situation than some of you seem to realize.

Your water could stop flowing out of your taps. Then what would you do?

This has already happened in California.

Luckily, CA has been temporarily rescued by the same El Niño that is now parching SEAsia.

IMHO, this Songkran will be Thailand's acid test. Will the Thais, and farangs, be able to cut back on their annual orgy of wasting precious water? I sure hope so, but my hopes are not high. If the usual Songkran thoughtlessness prevails again in this dire drought emergency, finishing off water supplies here, I will flee back to CA.

Hopefully, the proverbial door will hit me in my butt on my way out, discouraging my return to LOS, Land of Stupidity. Just because water has flowed freely out of your taps until now does not mean it will continue.

[MickRobbo]

Who cares! Songkran is around the corner, y'all!

You must be Thai, 0 forethought, 0 consequential thinking - you're in the right place, mosey on down to the 7 11 fill your abode up with grog, drink copious amounts (as much as is appropriate), go for a drive with rolling pit stops - preferably as quickly as possible; you'll be right at home. Situation normal roll on 2016 Songkran - I'm out of here, Cambodia lao lao. Oh dear

[Torrens54]

To the people that don't like golf..... Most courses have their own reservoirs and/or bored and the rainy season waters refill these. So tee off!

Not the point.

The water in these Reservoirs or from the Water Table MUST be conserved, as you may not have noticed but the past couple of "Rainy Seasons" failed to deliver the goods and there is not a lot of hope that this year will be any better.

Suggest you get your facts straight before you start Teeing Off !

[donnybay]

How are the golf courses those days? Quite green from what I have seen....

It may come as a big surprise to you but many golf courses are able to keep the fairways and greens in good condition because they have their own water supplies eg underground and off-course reservoirs. Maybe you've never considered the fact that golf package tours form a part of Thai tourist revenue, the same as Songkran. Why should any single source of tourist revenue be singled out for your uninformed remark? BTW Thai also play golf and are having their cars, SUVs and pick-ups cleaned at home or in car wash facilities as I type. They aren't too worried about the current water shortage so why not let them continue in their 'happy' world?

Its not uninformed remark by any means

Underground reserves lol, well we would be ok if there was plenty was plenty of underground water, Golf courses use an horrendous amount of water daily, enough to feed 60 Thai villages.

Golfers will tell you they have ponds, but can't explain how the ponds that use millions of gallons everyday are filled, when there has been little rain for months, hence the drought.

Two or three golf course will useprobably daily what will be used during songrkan

The droughts getting worse, seen nothing yet to suggest any cut back from golf courses

T.I.T, Don't expect the Generals anytime to cut water to golf courses, but please don't lie about what they use

Edited April 7, 2016 by donnybay

[Gulfsailor]

This is a more serious situation than some of you seem to realize.

Your water could stop flowing out of your taps. Then what would you do?

This has already happened in California.

Luckily, CA has been temporarily rescued by the same El Niño that is now parching SEAsia.

IMHO, this Songkran will be Thailand's acid test. Will the Thais, and farangs, be able to cut back on their annual orgy of wasting precious water? I sure hope so, but my hopes are not high. If the usual Songkran thoughtlessness prevails again in this dire drought emergency, finishing off water supplies here, I will flee back to CA.

Hopefully, the proverbial door will hit me in my butt on my way out, discouraging my return to LOS, Land of Stupidity. Just because water has flowed freely out of your taps until now does not mean it will continue.

Don't have specific numbers, but nearly all offices and factories being closed for 5 days during Songkran, I think the amount of water saved will actually be a lot more than what one can waist celebrating Songkran

[billd766]

quote "Kamphaeng Phet Governor Thani Thanyaphot, along with related agencies joined in distributing water pumps to over 200 households in Song Tham district."

I live in Khampaeng Phet province about 65 km from the city at the edge of the Mae Wong national park where our water supply comes from. Or at least it did until mid December 2015 so we have no government water supply, The 2 fire trucks from Klong Lan Pattana are out 8 hours a day, 5 days a week supplying water to all the villages and houses with no water.

About 2 km back towards Klong Lan there is a government water pipe which could if the KPP governor thought about it, be extended to our moo ban. A dalek or water tower could be built and the system cross connected to the local water supply network.

Would it be expensive. Yes, but not that expensive especially as most years the local water supply fails. OTOH how much does it cost to have 2 fire trucks driving around 8/5 and getting worn out. Also what would happen if the were a fire and the fire truck was empty and 15 km from the fire?

[Prbkk]

No doubting the severity of the drought but this is going to be "the out" for every bit of underachievement in the economy : it is/was the drought, just as it was the floods, the IMF, George Soros, foreign investors,mforeigners generally, a long , long list of excuses but always something/someone else that caused it.

[Bernard Flint]

Look after the tourists Ittipol, forget everybody else, let them continue to waste millions of litres of water.

[TPI]

Just wait, this is only the beginning of the problems.

As in the original post, the big problem that a lot of people do not realise is the problem of saline.

As the water table keeps dropping the saline concentration increases to the point where wells and bore holes become useless, if salt contamination gets into the farm lands then the land can be barren for more than 10 years!

I really do not think the Government has given any of this the serious thought that it deserves, but then again, they are just poor farmers anyway right? Who needs them.

Agreed, in Phrae, the salination of the ground water is starting to become a real problem....I'm not sure of the percentage of solids in the aquifer but it must be pretty high. for the first time the ground water has quite a briney taste and it leaves salt crystals on glass and concrete!

And I'm only a kilometer from the Yom river....I believe it's the source of the aquifer?

[BangkokKen]

Geoengineering

[shirtless]

Thais are now seeing higher food prices and seemed surprised , This drought is going to cost them big as agriculture is a big part of the economy.It will be the poor that really feel the heat.

[SABloke]

This is a more serious situation than some of you seem to realize.

Your water could stop flowing out of your taps. Then what would you do?

This has already happened in California.

Luckily, CA has been temporarily rescued by the same El Niño that is now parching SEAsia.

IMHO, this Songkran will be Thailand's acid test. Will the Thais, and farangs, be able to cut back on their annual orgy of wasting precious water? I sure hope so, but my hopes are not high. If the usual Songkran thoughtlessness prevails again in this dire drought emergency, finishing off water supplies here, I will flee back to CA.

Hopefully, the proverbial door will hit me in my butt on my way out, discouraging my return to LOS, Land of Stupidity. Just because water has flowed freely out of your taps until now does not mean it will continue.

Don't have specific numbers, but nearly all offices and factories being closed for 5 days during Songkran, I think the amount of water saved will actually be a lot more than what one can waist celebrating Songkran

Indeed, I'll flush one less time today and that can fill the kids' water guns 4 times. A lot of people don't seem to realise how much ''invisible'' water is used during the day, but goddamnit if they see some being thrown they lose their sh1t and go on a TV rage, most likely while taking a sh1t Edited April 10, 2016 by SABloke

[LannaGuy]

yup here comes the drought

but 'Mai Bpen Rai' let's throw away MILLIONS of liters next week

[billd766]

yup here comes the drought

but 'Mai Bpen Rai' let's throw away MILLIONS of liters next week

More like billions across the whole of Thailand but only small amounts in rural areas where water is too precious to waste in silly games.

I don't have a problem with young children doing it but young adults are a big no no to me.

Edited April 10, 2016 by billd766

[NongKhaiKid]

So the drought is intensifying !

Is this the drought that does or doesn't exist depending on the needs of the govt at any given time ?

[djjamie]

I feel for the poor farmers. It is about time that water management techniques were incorporated into any policy to help the farmers.

Stop payouts and educate farmers.

[jamesbrock]

Don't worry, there's a strong chance that the farmers will have too much water before the year is out - if the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction is a reliable source to go by. In their most recent advisory dated 7 April, they state: "A transition to ENSO-neutral is likely by May-June-July (MJJ) 2016 with close to a 50% chance for La Niña conditions to develop by August-September-October (ASO) 2016."

La Niña is the positive phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and is associated with heavy rains in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. The last La Niña episode occurred between mid-2010 and early 2012 - this La Niña was a large factor in the 2011–2012 Thailand floods.

Let's hope this La Niña was to bring similar rains to the last one.

[ratcatcher]

What is the point of providing a tractor when no one is ploughing anything as there is no water to plant any crops. It would have been better spent on water pumps. Isaan is currently like the dust bowl of the 1930s American depression and there is no guarantee of things changing soon as these extreme weather effects are becoming more severe and prolonged.

The tractors are probably used to drive pumps...quite common.

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I don't understand why they let the tractor do that. It takes ages to drive it to the land.

Build a stand where the motobike can drive the pump, is much faster and easyier and also saves a lot of fuel i guess.

Those lightweight 2 wheeled "iron buffaloes" can go places most motorbikes would get stuck in. They are cheap to run, easy to service and are versatile.

It may take "ages" to drive it "to the land", but have you ever seen a Thai farmer with a watch and worried about time? They get there when they get there.

Anyone using a motorbike for pumping purposes, would probably find it missing after one day.

[ratcatcher]

I.m very thirsty who should i call !!!!

Just could not resist GHOSTBUSTERS!!

Sorry, but wouldn't that be

?

[Plutojames88]

In the long run this may be a blessing rather than a curse .

Apathy with the Thais might need some shaking .

Hardship does that.

To help themselves they need to better evaluate their life's including leaders , and how they arrived , and how long they will stay.

Nature and the karmic wheels turn the elements into play

[ThaiKneeTim]

Just wait, this is only the beginning of the problems.

As in the original post, the big problem that a lot of people do not realise is the problem of saline.

As the water table keeps dropping the saline concentration increases to the point where wells and bore holes become useless, if salt contamination gets into the farm lands then the land can be barren for more than 10 years!

I really do not think the Government has given any of this the serious thought that it deserves, but then again, they are just poor farmers anyway right? Who needs them.

Agreed, in Phrae, the salination of the ground water is starting to become a real problem....I'm not sure of the percentage of solids in the aquifer but it must be pretty high. for the first time the ground water has quite a briney taste and it leaves salt crystals on glass and concrete!

And I'm only a kilometer from the Yom river....I believe it's the source of the aquifer?

I'm not a geologist, but I'm curious enough to actually do some research, and with many years of working in the water industry I can tell you that rivers don't feed aquifers.

Rainfall is dispersed by being absorbed by the ground (filling aquifers), by run off (surface drain off to rivers) or evaporation (going back where it came from).

Run off is the biggest problem, exacerbated by man's interference, mainly deforestation, but building on land denies rain access to the ground, then the rain or channelled quickly to streams and rivers. We as a species create our own problems.

As for salutation, that will only be a problem where salt deposits are found. Isaan, in it's distant past, appears to have once been seabed, the salt content of the soil is quite high. As someone pointed out, you don't see any earthworms around here.

The salts are evident in the water at low concentrations, but that's attributable to the relatively shallow borehole.

Droitwich Spa in Worcestershire, UK, is famous for it's brine source, saltier than the dead sea, yet that doesn't affect the local water supply, with boreholes at Westwood and Sugabrook pumping stations a few miles away.

The geological strata changes from level to level, so it's entirely possible to avoid salinity.

[ThaiKneeTim]

Just wait, this is only the beginning of the problems.

As in the original post, the big problem that a lot of people do not realise is the problem of saline.

As the water table keeps dropping the saline concentration increases to the point where wells and bore holes become useless, if salt contamination gets into the farm lands then the land can be barren for more than 10 years!

I really do not think the Government has given any of this the serious thought that it deserves, but then again, they are just poor farmers anyway right? Who needs them.

Agreed, in Phrae, the salination of the ground water is starting to become a real problem....I'm not sure of the percentage of solids in the aquifer but it must be pretty high. for the first time the ground water has quite a briney taste and it leaves salt crystals on glass and concrete!

And I'm only a kilometer from the Yom river....I believe it's the source of the aquifer?

I'm not a geologist, but I'm curious enough to actually do some research, and with many years of working in the water industry I can tell you that rivers don't feed aquifers.

Rainfall is dispersed by being absorbed by the ground (filling aquifers), by run off (surface drain off to rivers) or evaporation (going back where it came from).

Run off is the biggest problem, exacerbated by man's interference, mainly deforestation, but building on land denies rain access to the ground, then the rain [bold] is [/bold] channelled quickly to streams and rivers. We as a species create our own problems.

As for [bold] salination [/bold], that will only be a problem where salt deposits are found. Isaan, in it's distant past, appears to have once been seabed, the salt content of the soil is quite high. As someone pointed out, you don't see any earthworms around here.

The salts are evident in the water at low concentrations, but that's attributable to the relatively shallow borehole.

Droitwich Spa in Worcestershire, UK, is famous for it's brine source, saltier than the dead sea, yet that doesn't affect the local water supply, with boreholes at Westwood and Sugabrook pumping stations a few miles away.

The geological strata changes from level to level, so it's entirely possible to avoid salinity.

Apologies for the autocarrot typos that escaped the poof reading. Corrections above in bold.

EDIT note: I give up, I can't get the bold to work. I blame the smartphone!

Edited April 10, 2016 by ThaiKneeTim

[HLover]

How are the golf courses those days? Quite green from what I have seen....

They use magic water imported from Chinese dams.

[impulse]

IMHO, this Songkran will be Thailand's acid test. Will the Thais, and farangs, be able to cut back on their annual orgy of wasting precious water? I sure hope so, but my hopes are not high. If the usual Songkran thoughtlessness prevails again in this dire drought emergency, finishing off water supplies here, I will flee back to CA.

Hopefully, the proverbial door will hit me in my butt on my way out, discouraging my return to LOS, Land of Stupidity. Just because water has flowed freely out of your taps until now does not mean it will continue.

Lots of reasons to hate the lunacy that Songkran has become, but wasting water is low on the list. Traffic safety is a much better reason to hate water being thrown on moving scooters and cars with abandon.

To anyone wanting to go wild, I gave up rice for a week, freeing up approximately 2 tons of water that would have been required to grow that puny kg of rice. I won't be throwing water (traffic safety concerns), so feel free to use mine. Try not to hurt anyone, please.

To those claiming golf courses have their own water sources: Yes, they do. They stick their very own straw into the same glasses of water we all draw our water from. Not to say that golf courses are not a worthwhile use of a lot of water, but they should be judged based on the benefit per ton of water they use- just like industry, agriculture and Songkran celebrations.

[billd766]

So the drought is intensifying !

Is this the drought that does or doesn't exist depending on the needs of the govt at any given time ?

I have been living and working in Thailand on and off since 1993 and this is the worst drought in my memory.

It doesn't matter to rural Thailand if the government needs the drought or not.

In reality it is here, it has been since last year and IMHO ther will be little improvement this year or next and it won't be safe until about 2019 or 2020.

However this is only my personal opinion. YMMV.

[billd766]

Don't worry, there's a strong chance that the farmers will have too much water before the year is out - if the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction is a reliable source to go by. In their most recent advisory dated 7 April, they state: "A transition to ENSO-neutral is likely by May-June-July (MJJ) 2016 with close to a 50% chance for La Niña conditions to develop by August-September-October (ASO) 2016."

La Niña is the positive phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and is associated with heavy rains in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. The last La Niña episode occurred between mid-2010 and early 2012 - this La Niña was a large factor in the 2011–2012 Thailand floods.

Let's hope this La Niña was to bring similar rains to the last one.

I wouldn't even put 20 baht on that nor hold my breath.

I will however be more than pleased to be wrong.

[Lampang2]

This is a more serious situation than some of you seem to realize.

Your water could stop flowing out of your taps. Then what would you do?

This has already happened in California.

Luckily, CA has been temporarily rescued by the same El Niño that is now parching SEAsia.

IMHO, this Songkran will be Thailand's acid test. Will the Thais, and farangs, be able to cut back on their annual orgy of wasting precious water? I sure hope so, but my hopes are not high. If the usual Songkran thoughtlessness prevails again in this dire drought emergency, finishing off water supplies here, I will flee back to CA.

Hopefully, the proverbial door will hit me in my butt on my way out, discouraging my return to LOS, Land of Stupidity. Just because water has flowed freely out of your taps until now does not mean it will continue.

Los Angeles reached it maximum habitants loooong time ago.

Based on available water.

One complete river was 'bought" in from of the nooses of surprised farmers.

This river was redirected directly to los Angeles.

And the of course the hoover dam and a lot more along the same line.

So actually water stopped coming from them taps along time ago, but engineers came to the rescue.

But California was never ment to house all those people.

When united states decided to populate every corner, people where free to settle wherever they wanted.

No planning if it was sustainable.

It was not in many cases.

Earthquakes aside.

Edited April 10, 2016 by Lampang2

[MJP]

Just wait, this is only the beginning of the problems.

As in the original post, the big problem that a lot of people do not realise is the problem of saline.

As the water table keeps dropping the saline concentration increases to the point where wells and bore holes become useless, if salt contamination gets into the farm lands then the land can be barren for more than 10 years!

I really do not think the Government has given any of this the serious thought that it deserves, but then again, they are just poor farmers anyway right? Who needs them.

Agreed, in Phrae, the salination of the ground water is starting to become a real problem....I'm not sure of the percentage of solids in the aquifer but it must be pretty high. for the first time the ground water has quite a briney taste and it leaves salt crystals on glass and concrete!

And I'm only a kilometer from the Yom river....I believe it's the source of the aquifer?

I'm not a geologist, but I'm curious enough to actually do some research, and with many years of working in the water industry I can tell you that rivers don't feed aquifers.

Rainfall is dispersed by being absorbed by the ground (filling aquifers), by run off (surface drain off to rivers) or evaporation (going back where it came from).

Run off is the biggest problem, exacerbated by man's interference, mainly deforestation, but building on land denies rain access to the ground, then the rain or channelled quickly to streams and rivers. We as a species create our own problems.

As for salutation, that will only be a problem where salt deposits are found. Isaan, in it's distant past, appears to have once been seabed, the salt content of the soil is quite high. As someone pointed out, you don't see any earthworms around here.

The salts are evident in the water at low concentrations, but that's attributable to the relatively shallow borehole.

Droitwich Spa in Worcestershire, UK, is famous for it's brine source, saltier than the dead sea, yet that doesn't affect the local water supply, with boreholes at Westwood and Sugabrook pumping stations a few miles away.

The geological strata changes from level to level, so it's entirely possible to avoid salinity.

It's called a "losing stream" when a river flow feeds an aquifer. Other way round, it's called a "gaining stream".

[MaiChai]

I think we are being misled; were they really giving away tractors and do they have plantations in Thailand?