Asian Correspondent Asia News

The Bangkok Post on January 10:

Disaster prevention and water management experts are worried that the delay in discharging water from the dams could lead to a repeat of last year’s catastrophic floods.

“This is definitely a worrying sign,” National Disaster Warning Council chairman Smith Dharmasaroja told the Bangkok Post in a phone interview yesterday. “Agencies in charge of dam operations must urgently release water from the dams to make sure there is enough room to receive new inflows during the approaching rainy season.”

Mr Smith, a former Meteorological Department chief and a member of the government-appointed Strategic Committee for Water Resources Management (SCWRM), said Thailand is expected to experience high rainfall this year due to the La Nina weather phenomenon.

“We have to be prepared. Water storage levels in the major dams should be lowered to about 40% of their storage capacity,” he said.

The Royal Irrigation Department (RID) reported yesterday the Bhumibol Dam is holding up to 12.3 billion cubic metres, or about 91% of its storage capacity, while the Sirikit Dam is 89% full. Water storage in most major dams in the North, Central and Northeast also exceeds 70% of their capacity.

Some experts blamed mismanagement of water storage in major dams for last year’s epic floods. They said dam operators should have released the water before the rainy season arrived to have more retention capacity.

….

Boonsanong Suchatpong, the RID’s spokesman, however, assured that his agency and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, the dam’s operator, had carefully managed water storage in the major dams, based on lessons learned from last year’s flooding.

The Bhumibol and Sirikit dams, in Tak and Uttaradit provinces respectively, were releasing between 40-55 million cu/m each day to feed off-season rice crops, he said, adding the storage levels in the dams would reach about 40% of their capacity at the end of the dry season in April.

Water storage levels in the major dams were much higher than in the same period last year simply because of the unprecedented volume of rainfall, which caused a vast amount of water to flow into the dams. “We are discharging the water out of the dams _ both for farming purposes and to create space for new inflows,” he said.

BP: With the story was the following graphic:

Source: Bangkok Post

BP: Having regularly blogged about the water level in dams last year – see Sirikit and Bhumibol dam posts – and having quickly checked the Royal Irrigation Department Web site after the January 10 story to confirm whether the Royal Irrigation Department official was correct that they were releasing 40-55 million cu/m a day and that the capacity was trending downwards at a much faster rate than previous years, BP saw this was basically the case. Assured by this and being busy with other things, it didn’t seem necessary to blog about. Checking on the  Bangkok Post on January 23, you have:

Water should be released from major dams in the North to prepare for new inflows, a Chulalongkorn University’s expert said.

The amount of water held in many dams, especially Bhumibol and Sirikit dams in Tak and Uttaradit provinces, is much higher compared to this time last year.

“Officials should start releasing water in the dams right away as we have only a few months left before the rainy season arrives in May,” Sombat Yumuang, director of Geo-Informatics Centre for Thailand (GISThai), Chulalongkorn University, said.

…

Last year’s floods in the North and the Central Plains were caused by unusually high rainfall brought by several storms and typhoons, he said.

On Friday, the Bhumibol Dam held a record 11.8 billion cubic metres of water or around 87% of its storage capacity of 13.5 billion cu/m.

On the same day last year, the dam held only about 7.8 billion cu/m of water in its reservoir.

On Friday, the Sirikit Dam, which has a capacity of 9.5 billion cu/m, was holding 8.2 billion cu/m of water or 86% of its capacity.

The water volume at the same time last year was 6.9 billion cu/m.

“The figure is very scary. We have to take water management seriously since we cannot control rainfall,” he said.

Mr Sombat said he supported a suggestion from a Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) expert that water from the dam be released at twice the volume of last year to ensure the floods are not repeated.

BP: BP’s problem is that either this expert is clueless – by the use of the term “start releasing water in the dams right away” implying that the authorities have not been releasing water – or the Bangkok Post has taken his statements out of context. Bizarrely, the Bangkok Post hasn’t noticed that in the 10 days from the January 10 graph to January 20 (i.e. the reference to “on Friday”), the capacity of the Bhumibol Dam has dropped from 91% to 87% and Sirikit Dam has dropped from 89% to 86%. This is in just 10 days. Surely, this should have indicated that water was being released, no?

Bhumibol dam:

Source: Hydro and Agro Informatics Institute (an agency under Ministry of Science and Technology) although it states it figures are from the Irrigation Department.

Note: Left-hand vertical axis is million cubic metres. Horizontal axis is date. It is every 28 days or so (no idea why!), but it goes from January to December. “Full” data is only available for these 8 years.

BP: The dark red is of course 2012. You can see that while capacity is way above normal, it is dropping rapidly and that if water continues to be discharged at the current rate, it will reach the average of previous years by the end of April/early May (depending on rain fall in March and April). At what rate is water being discharged? For the first 24 days of January 2012, 1.309 billion cu/m has been discharged from the Bhumipol dam (or on average 55 million cu/m a day). This compares with 589 million cu/m for the first 24 days of January in 2011.

NOTE: The expert says that water should be released at twice the volume of last year and it is currently way more than that….

Sirikit Dam

Source: Hydro and Agro Informatics Institute (an agency under Ministry of Science and Technology) although it states it figures are from the Irrigation Department.

Note: Left-hand vertical axis is million cubic metres. Horizontal axis is date. It is every 28 days (no idea why!), but it goes from January to December. “Full” data is only available for these 8 years.

BP: Again, the dark red is of course 2012. You can see the capacity is not so far above normal like the Bhumibol dam, but that the level is dropping at a faster rate than previous years and dropping rapidly and that if water continues to be discharged at the current rate, it will reach the average of previous years by the end of April/early May (depending on rain fall in March/April). At what rate is water being discharged? For the first 24 days of January 2012, 913 million cu/m has been discharged from the Sirikit dam (or on average 38 million cu/m a day). This compares with 704 million cu/m for the first 24 days of January in 2011.

Of course, one shouldn’t be complacent and BP will regularly check to see that the level of water being discharged so far continues over the next 4-5 months, but based on the above charts, what exactly is been done wrong now?  Perhaps, the Bangkok Post will include details of the level of discharge of water in their next article…..