Vu Trong Hong, chairman of the Vietnam Irrigation Association has warned about the dangers Vietnam could face when Laos build a new hydropower plant on the Mekong River. Vu Trong Hong, chairman of the Vietnam Irrigation Association Laos announced that they were starting the 4,775 GWh per year Pak Beng hydropower project early next year. This will be their third power plant on the Mekong River despite warnings from the Mekong River Commission. “In the future, the Mekong River will die,” Vu Trong Hong, chairman of Vietnam Irrigation Association, said. He went on to say that the river would die if other countries continue to build power plants, saying that they are still poor countries and have nothing else to depend on. Vietnam is definitely at a disadvantage as it is located at the mouth of the river. Other countries already dam the water while Vietnam needs suffers from water shortages. He said, that hydropower plants were already a threat to the river’s ecosystem because fish and sediment can’t move downstream and there aren’t sufficiently strong currents to prevent saltwater intrusion upstream. “It’s clearly more dangerous to us. More importantly, Thailand and Cambodia are carrying out projects to divert the water from Mekong River to other areas in their countries, reducing the amount of water in the river,” Hong said. “Take the Red River as example, it hardly has any water now comparing to the past because China built eight to nine power plants upstream.” Hong said Vietnam should blame… [Read full story]
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