PM Prayut orders solution to increasing water level at Bhumibol Dam

[Mook23]

Ask the Chinese to open their dam again?

Forbid people to wash their cars 8 times a week. My soi looks like a carwash at times... !!! ...

[Siamwhiteelephant]

I gather their operating procedure is not to capture as much water as possible because dams like this are used as buffers to stop flooding downstream in Bangkok. They often bleed off water if the expectation is heavy rains. So when the rains don't come they get caught with their pants down. Last year they attempted to use cloud seeding upstream in an attempt to get the level sufficiently high, but it failed.

"So when the rains don't come they get caught with their pants down" ... and start cloud seeding.

[taony]

Read this more carefully. The dam is nearly empty, so they want to fill it before the rains come? At which time it will then be in danger of overflowing and they'll need to take further emergency measures to prevent the overflow. Another potential 2010 flood perhaps? Are the weather forecasters the only people who actually look ahead here?

You also need to read more carefully and do a little research also as to how much water was in the dam before the floods and who was in charge at the time.

What will happen is that the Ping river will start to fill up and that leads into the Chao Phraya down in Chai Nat which is also critically low. That in turn leads eventually into Bangkok which needs the fresh river water to push the sea water back to give Bangkok drinking water.

It will take the best part of 2 years rainfall to get the Bhumibol dam even 75% full because the rice farmer down river will also be using the water. In addition the underground aquifers will also be refilled.

The will be no repeat of the 2010 flood which was caused by a political decision to override ALL of the water departments to make sure that the rice farmers could grow as much rice as possible.

Yes. The hallmark of Thai news reporting: we all get to apply our own interpetations of what they are trying to say. The articles always raise more questions than they answer.