Hydropower plants refuse to discharge water 

Muong Lo, a 3,000 hectare field, was severely damaged in the historic flood on October 11, 2017 with 60 hectares of 2-crop land area buried under gravel, soil and rocks. It now faces a water shortage as hydropower plants refuse to discharge water to save crops.

Nghia Van Co Ltd, which is in charge of providing water to three districts of Van Chan, Tram Tau, Mu Cang Chai and Nghia Lo Town, complained that it cannot provide water because the Noong Phai Hydropower Plant is not discharging water.

On January 29, 2018, the company sent an urgent document to the local agriculture department, reporting that Noong Phai was storing water for electricity generation and it would only discharge water either at 8-12 or 16-22h every day. 

As a result, 17.36 hectares of the Muong Lo field in Sang Han hamlet in Nghia Loi commune and a part of Nghia Lo are suffering from drought.

The company sent another request on March 1, and once again sent a document complaining that Noong Phai hydropower plant refused to discharge water to serve agricultural production. 

In the document, it reported that the land area suffering from drought had increased to 50 hectares.

According to Nghia Van Company’s Pham Minh Quang, the severe floods in October 2017 damaged 200 irrigation works, including 182 works in Tram Tau district. 

The company has joined forces with local people to repair 162 works, worth VND8.349 billion, while it has no more money to fix problems at 46 other works, estimated to cost VND41 billion.

The flood last October damaged 56 hectares of field in Van Chan district, 20 hectares of which cannot be unrecovered, and 39 hectares in Tram Tau district, blamed on heavy rains.

However, the problem was that while it was raining heavily, the hydropower plants on Thia and Nam Dong’s upper course discharged water to protect the dams. As a result, hundreds of hectares of crops in the lower course were damaged because of the floods.

In the dry season, hydropower plants all try to store water and refuse to discharge water. ‘Muong Lo is dying because of hydropower works,” a local man said.

Pham Quoc Hung, head of the Yen Bai provincial Irrigation Sub-department, said hydropower plants are under the control of the Industry and Trade Department, which means that the plants will only discharge water if the department instructs them to do so.

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