VietNamNet Bridge – Understanding well that the water reservoirs are “waiting for death,” local authorities cannot do anything to rescue them, just because of the lack of money.

A reservoir in Binh Dinh Province.

Old age, poor health

Binh Dinh is one of the localities which had the highest numbers of water reservoirs in the central region. Of the 161 reservoirs, only 18 have the capacity of 3 million cubic meters and higher, 30 have the capacity of between 1 million and less than 3 million cubic meters, while the remaining 113 reservoirs are very small with less than 1 million cubic meters in capacity.

The reservoirs there are “tiny” because of the natural geographical conditions in the locality, where there is no large basin, while the rivers and streams are short and narrow.

Most of them have got too old. The Thu Thiem reservoir in Tay Son district, with the designed capacity of 2.1 million cubic meters, was built in 1945, while the others were mostly built within five years after the liberalization day in 1975.

At that time, the State only funded the construction of some large scale reservoirs, including the Nui Mot reservoir in An Nhon town, the Thach Khe and Van Hoi. In other works, the State only propped up cement, steel, while the local cooperatives spent money on the construction.

Since the cooperatives themselves also lacked capital, they had to pay the contractors in farm produce. The limited capital and the backward technologies certainly led to the low quality of the construction works.

Meanwhile, the works have become too old and weak after 40 years of operation, according to Phan Xuan Hai, Head of the BInh Dinh provincial Water Resources Sub-department.

Also according to Hai, of the 113 small reservoirs, only 29 can meet the current standards, while the others have got broken or severely damaged.

The reservoirs in Phu Yen province are facing the same problems. Besides the 2 hydropower plant’s water reservoirs, the province has 41 irrigation reservoirs with the total capacity of 62 million cubic meters to water 6,000 hectares of cultivated land.

Though the reservoirs have been built recently, after 1980s, the low construction quality has made the works damaged seriously after several years of operation.

The most worrying thing is that a lot of reservoirs now cannot help fight against the floods. As the reservoirs with the capacity of less than 1 million cubic meters, they have been built on the natural ground and have been seriously eroded.

With no money, local authorities at the end of their resources

According to Le Chi Trong, Deputy Director of the Phu Yen provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, 21 reservoirs which have been badly damaged need the urgent repair over the last two years. However, nothing has been done because the local authorities don’t have money.

In fact, they not only lack money to upgrade the reservoirs, but also lack money to recruit qualified workers to operate the reservoirs.

Hai from Binh Dinh province said that in 2012, when state officials went to the sites to take inspections, they found out that the owners of the reservoirs did not keep any documents relating to the designs of the reservoirs. Of the 113 small reservoirs, only 11 had technical design profiles.

“These are all valuable assets, worth hundreds of billions of dong. However, no document about the assets has been kept,” Hai said.

Thien Nhien