The 2019 Mekong Drought & Devastation
The arguments for responsibility are debated with conclusion: was it the "worst" drought, the lowest the river has been in decades or was it the dams - the Jinhong Dam in China & the Xayaboury dam in Laos?
Certainly the rainfall is way below normal, but IMHO the dams have only worsened the problem by mismanagement - with holding water for reasons of maintenance and testing of power generation at the worst possible time, when there was obviously a serious drought.
One of the main arguments for the dams was a more controlled water flow, with more in the dry season & less in the wet season. The Jinhong dam with held water for maintenance and at the same time the water level in the Xayaboury dam went up because they too with held water!
"When China’s Jinghong dam reduced its water discharge from July 5 to 15, the level of the river in Chiang Saen, which is the uppermost water station, continuously dropped by 0.43 metres, while the level of water in Luang Prabang, which is upstream of Xayaburi, rose slightly to 0.86 metres, and the level in Chiang Khan, which is downstream to the dam, dropped by 1.77 metres."
“Hydropower plants don’t take away a river’s water; they only retain and discharge the water to generate power, so the overall amount of water stays the same,” said Nguyen Huu Thien, an independent expert on Mekong Delta ecology.
“It is the river flow that’s affected."
Large hydropower plants with their own reservoirs can help retain water during rainy seasons and discharge water during dry seasons, which helps mitigate flooding and drought in downstream areas, according to the Vietnamese expert.
However, during years with extreme weather conditions hydropower stations can be a double-edged sword, worsening environmental impacts on the environment.
When there is too much rain, for example, these plants have to make an emergency discharge to avoid dam failure, which adds to the flooding in downstream areas.
When there is a severe drought, hydropower stations need to retain enough water to maintain operations, which deprives downstream areas of the much-needed resource.
In July 2019 it would appear as if the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing & none of the dam operators really cared what was happening downstream!
A couple of articles presenting both sides of the story.
Vietnam braces for severe impact of Mekong River’s record low water levels
Vietnam braces for severe impact of Mekong River’s record low water levels - Tuoi Tre News
Thursday, July 25, 2019, 15:07 GMT+7
The Mekong River’s water level during this year’s early flood season, from June to July, is among the lowest on record, according to the Mekong River Commission (MRC), with experts warning of impending consequences on the upcoming dry season in Vietnam.
Water levels in the Mekong River recorded in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia are all below the previous record low recorded in 1992, MRC said in a report on July 18.
The Mekong is a trans-boundary river in Southeast Asia, formed in the Tibetan Plateau, which courses through China's Yunnan Province, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam before discharging into the East Vietnam Sea.
The water level in Thailand’s Chiang Saen District was 2.10 meters as of the time of the report, 3.02m lower than its long-term average measured over 57 years (1961-2018) and about 0.75m lower than the minimum level ever logged.
In Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, the Mekong River waters were just 0.70m on July 18, 5.54m below its long-term average over the same period and about 1.36m lower than the minimum level.
The water in Cambodia’s Kratie Province measured 9.31m deep, about 5.40m below its long-term average but 0.16m higher than the minimum level on record.
At water stations in Chiang Saen, Vientiane, and Kratie water levels dropped 0.97m, 5.58m and 0.38m, respectively between June and July.
The MRC says the relatively rapid and sustained decrease in water levels and discharge from the Mekong River in June and July 2019 is unprecedented and does not reflect the natural recession of seasonal flows.
During this period of the year, the Mekong water should be slowly increasing, according to the MRC.
Deficient rainfall and drier-than-average weather conditions are some of the key factors that have contributed to the current state of what is described as the “regional low flow” of the Mekong river basin, according to the MRC.
However, the situation is expected to improve at the end of July with rain in the forecast, the commission noted.
The MRC, established by Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia in 1995, is an intergovernmental organization for managing and coordinating the use and care of the Mekong River. China and Myanmar are also included in the commission as “dialogue partners."
The six countries now work together in a cooperative framework.
Chinese hydropower plants to blame?
The MRC report also mentioned the activities of the Jinghong dam in China’s Yunnan Province as a potential contributor to the Mekong’s low flow.
According to an official notification from China’s Ministry of Water Resources, the outflow of water from the Jinghong hydropower station in Yunnan between July 5 and 19 decreased by about half, from 1,050-1,250 cubic meters per second (m3/s) to 504-600 cubic meters per second, due to “grid maintenance."
Eight Chinese dams built on the Mekong, or Lancang as it is called in China, have the capacity to block a combined total of over 40 billion cubic meters of water for use in electricity generation, irrigation and other purposes, according to a report on Thai PBS World, which cited numbers from Mekong Butterfly, a civic group that studies the impacts of dams constructed along the Mekong River.
The sudden sharp drop in water levels in the Mekong was also blamed on the retention of water in the reservoir behind the Xayaburi dam in Laos from July 9 in preparation for the country’s trial run of seven electricity generators between July 17 and 29, the news site reported.
The 1,260-megawatt Xayaburi dam, located just south of Luang Prabang in Xayaburi Province, is scheduled to begin churning out electricity this October, with the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) as its primary customer.
Loei Province in northeastern Thailand has seen the Mekong water level drop to a 57-year low since the Xayaburi dam began retaining water, according to Bangkok Post.
Hoang Thien, a Vietnamese national who was in the Golden Triangle area in Chiang Rai, Thailand on Saturday last week told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper temperatures were 37-38 degrees Celsius with very low humidity.
“The water level was so low we could easily see through to the river bed,” Thien said.
“Only small boats could travel on the [Mekong] River, and I overheard a Thai guide telling a Chinese tourist ‘mei you shui’ [no water] when describing the river’s situation,” she said.
El Nino + hydropower = worse situation
“Hydropower plants don’t take away a river’s water; they only retain and discharge the water to generate power, so the overall amount of water stays the same,” said Nguyen Huu Thien, an independent expert on Mekong Delta ecology.
“It is the river flow that’s affected."
Large hydropower plants with their own reservoirs can help retain water during rainy seasons and discharge water during dry seasons, which helps mitigate flooding and drought in downstream areas, according to the Vietnamese expert.
However, during years with extreme weather conditions hydropower stations can be a double-edged sword, worsening environmental impacts on the environment.
When there is too much rain, for example, these plants have to make an emergency discharge to avoid dam failure, which adds to the flooding in downstream areas.
When there is a severe drought, hydropower stations need to retain enough water to maintain operations, which deprives downstream areas of the much-needed resource.
“We are currently going through an El Nino phase that causes lack of rain and is expected to last for another two months, according to a July 15 report by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,” Thien said.
“All these hydropower dams are only worsening the situation."
All signs are pointing to a historically low flood season in Vietnam this year, said Dr. Le Anh Tuan from Can Tho University, located in the namesake city of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region.
A low flood season can lead to decreasing illuviation, depleting aquamarine resources and salination, which affects crop yields, Tuan said.
“If agriculture and environment authorities don’t issue official instructions and have plans for water retention right now, the upcoming dry season will become much worse,” he warned.
Xayaburi Dam partly to blame for Mekong Basin crisis: activists
Xayaburi Dam partly to blame for Mekong Basin crisis: activists
Jul 25. 2019
Activists say some of the blame for the severe water shortage in the Mekong River Basin lies with the Xayaburi hydropower dam in Laos.
Though dam operator CK Power PCL has strongly denied it is storing water in the dam’s reservoir and causing an extraordinary reduction of water levels downstream, hydrological information cited by Montree Chantawong from Mekong Butterfly suggests that the 1,260-megawatt dam is to blame for unnatural fluctuations in water levels and flow downstream.
Even though the rainy season has already begun in the Mekong region, the river is not bursting its banks like it usually does. Instead it is dry as it would have been in the middle of the drought season, causing widespread water shortage and mass deaths of aquatic animals.
Montree said that though a lower discharge of water from dams in China and the ongoing severe drought in the Mekong River Basin were the key contributing factors to this unseasonal drying up of the river, the Xayaburi hydropower dam, which was recently built on the river’s mainstream northern Laos, is intensifying the severity of the situation.
“Though the dam operator insists its project has no influence on the Mekong water level downstream, we have noticed that the level of the river between Chiang Saen, Luang Prabang and Chiang Khan have changed unnaturally and inconsistently,” he said.
“Under normal circumstances, the change in the water level in these three spots must be similar because they are situated next to one another.”
Instead, he said, when China’s Jinghong dam reduced its water discharge from July 5 to 15, the level of the river in Chiang Saen, which is the uppermost water station, continuously dropped by 0.43 metres, while the level of water in Luang Prabang, which is upstream of Xayaburi, rose slightly to 0.86 metres, and the level in Chiang Khan, which is downstream to the dam, dropped by 1.77 metres.
These bizarre changes at the three stations and the inconsistent fluctuations upstream and downstream of Xayaburi dam, he said, are a clear indication that the dam is not being operated strictly on run-of-river basis as claimed.
Moreover, he said, there is no public access to data on the amount of water flowing in and out of the Xayaburi dam, and there is no way of verifying if this dam is being operated strictly on a run-of-river basis – meaning the outflow matches the inflow of water into the dam.
“Xayaburi dam certainly has a reservoir that can store up to 514 million cubic metres of water and it is up to the dam’s management to decide whether it will discharge water that matches the amount of the inflow,” Montree said.
However, Xayaburi Power’s deputy manager Anuparp Wonglakorn insisted that the dam is being operated on a run-of-river basis, and has had nothing to do with the water shortage downstream of the Mekong.
“We too are victims of this serious drought and the reduction in water discharged from Chinese dams, and because we’ve received a low amount of water to operate, we’re forced to limit our electricity generation,” Anuparp said.
He claimed that Xayaburi Dam had only received water at a flow rate of around 1,700 cubic metres per second, which forced them to only operate three power turbines and generate a mere 500MW.
He also said that since the operation of the dam has been stopped, it will not be storing any water and will instead release all the excess through spillways. Hence, he said, the dam cannot cause any adverse impact downstream, as suspected by many.
However, CK Power has refused to share the inflow and outflow levels of the dam, saying this information was classified as it’s based on the company’s contract with the Lao government.
Aquatic life faces extinction as upstream dams leave Mekong River dry
Aquatic life faces extinction as upstream dams leave Mekong River dry
Jul 19. 2019
The Mekong River’s extremely low level of water caused by upstream hydropower dam projects has triggered the death of masses of fish and heightened the risk of mass extinction of aquatic life in the entire Mekong River Basin, environmental experts highlighted on Friday.
They said that the ongoing loss of biodiversity in the Mekong Basin is posing a major threat to food security and wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people in the region.
Narit Art-harn, a representative of locals in Bueng Kan’s Bung Khla district, revealed that the level of the Mekong this week was lower than the lowest during the dry season, even though mid-July is normally the rainy season and the river should be full and even overflowing.
“We are facing an extraordinary situation, because instead of the seasonal floods that we usually face this time of year, we are now encountering a severe drought, which is bad for both the people and the ecosystem,” Narit said.
He said that even though fishermen in Bueng Kan were able to catch more fish due to the very low level of water, many of the fish they caught have bellies full of eggs, because this is the breeding season for many of the species in the Mekong.
Hence, he said, he is deeply concerned that this might be the last season for the fishermen to get an abundant catch because these fish might soon be extinct.
“The extremely low level of water is killing these fish, because it is preventing them from entering tributaries to lay eggs in flooded forests and swamps, which means an entire generation of fish will vanish,” he emphasised.
He also called on the Thai government to take more proactive steps to protect people living along the banks of the Mekong River and its tributaries from the transboundary impacts caused by hydropower dams in China and Laos.
Chainarong Setthachua, an academic from Maha Sarakham University, said many fish were found “cooked” in the hot water of ponds in the Mekong riverbed in Nong Khai’s Sangkhom district after the water level receded due to a recent reduction in water discharged from China’s Jinghong Dam and a test-run operation at Laos’ Xayaburi Dam.
Nonn Panitvong, founder of Siamensis.org and prominent freshwater fish expert, insisted that fish in the Mekong River was the most important food security for people living across the Mekong Basin.
Hence, he said, that by ignoring the serious loss of biodiversity for the sake of hydropower dams, the governments in the region are trading ecosystems that sustain tens of millions of people for the wealth of a handful of investors.
“When they [the authorities and investors] build new hydropower dams, they claim energy stability as the reason, but in the end, people cannot eat electricity. Fish and vegetables from the river are actually our food,” Nonn stressed.
Niwat Roikaew, chief of Chiang Rai’s environmental conservation group Rak Chiang Khong, said that he will send a petition detailing the Mekong River’s bizarre water levels and other impacts China’s upstream hydropower projects are having on people to the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok soon.
“I want a productive discussion based on academic information with Chinese authorities to mitigate the adverse impact these hydropower dams are having on the ecosystems and the people of the Mekong River Basin,” Niwat said.
“If China wants to be a superpower, it must improve its standards of environmental protection on all its projects, otherwise negative feedback from harmful projects will affect its reputation globally.”
Opinion: Mekong Region Needs to Overcome Drought Together
http://www.khaosodenglish.com/opini...ng-region-needs-to-overcome-drought-together/
Khaosod English - August 8, 2019 7:22 pm
Key points: Thailand and other countries in the Mekong Region have been suffering more and more severe droughts for the past five decades. Not only do they need a long-term plan to cope with the ongoing crisis, but also require regional cooperation as well.
By Dr. Liu Hui, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research
Drought, follows flood and storm, is among the most influential natural disasters in the world. According to 2018 publication on the International Disaster Database website, 16% of people affected by disasters in 2018 were affected by droughts.
Over the past few decades, countries along the Lancang-Mekong River have experienced different degrees of drought events, causing tremendous impacts on agriculture, fisheries, production and life.
The Lancang-Mekong region is facing raising temperature like the other places in the world. According to surface temperature of January to March, 2019 is the 3rd warmest of 170 years. As news released by WMO, the Earth just had the warmest June on record.
The temperature departure from historical average is around 1 Degree Celsius in the Lancang-Mekong region in 2019.
When high temperature is accompanied with strong El Niño or weakened Southwest monsoon, long-lasting severe drought will take place in this region, like the whole-basin exceptional drought in 2016 and the long-lasting extensively affected drought this year.
A Warmer Era
According to meteorological data, the rainfall in Lancang River basin was 42 percent less than average during January to mid July 2019.
Low rainfall in early Wet Season this year was also reported by Mekong River Commission Secretariat (MRCS) in its weekly flood situation reports since June.
According to the drought index (SPEI) of January to June 2019, drought occurred in the whole Lancang-Mekong region.
For the Lancang basin, the drought severity got heavier since March, and reached severe level in May; For the middle Mekong basin (Thailand, part of Lao PDR and Cambodia), the severity of drought stayed moderate to severe level since the beginning of the year; For the Mekong delta region, the drought happened in February and April, and ended in May.
The reservoirs on Lancang mainstream stored part of the water during the wet season of 2018, and released supplementary water to the Mekong River during January to June 2019, and the water level of reservoirs gradually dropped to the dead storage level in early July.
Considering running out of the “supplementary” capacity, the Jinghong reservoir decided to implement the routine overhaul from 5th to 19th July, during which reasonable outflow was maintained.
A notification of the operation information during the overhaul was sent from the Ministry of Water Resources, China to mekong countries and MRCS in advance on 3rd July. And MRCS timely published the information on its website on 3rd July, titled Water flow from China’s Jinghong station to fluctuate, but no major impact is expected.
Recently, news coverage about drought this year has been increasing and drawn more and more attentions from farmers to senior administration officials.
According to the Cambodia Daily on July 20, 2019, an extended drought in Cambodia has caused the tributaries of Tonle Sap lake to dry up, spelling ruin for farmers and fishermen in Battambang province. Villagers in this district have been unable to fish since April because of the drought. They are now running out of food and have pleaded with the government to give them emergency relief.
The drought situation in Thailand is so severe that the government has asked China, Laos and Myanmar to release more water into rivers to help relieve the drought conditions in Thailand said Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on 24 July 2019.
Based on long time observation and research on the drought study in the Lancang-Mekong region, I would like to take this opportunity to share my findings and suggestions with riparian stakeholders and decision makers, with the aim to improve our drought relief ability jointly to make a more secure Lancang-Mekong region.
Findings
(1) The results of meteorological drought analysis show that the drought severity in northeastern Thailand, most of Cambodia and Myanmar has increased over the past half century, especially in some parts of northeastern Thailand.
In most parts of the basin, the frequency of meteorological drought is close to 25% due to low rainfall, especially in northeastern Thailand and Cambodia; and Cambodia and Vietnam Delta in the lower reaches are more liable to severe and exceptional droughts.
By analyzing the causes of typical drought events, it is found that the main reason for the drought in the Mekong River Basin is the extraordinary less rainfall (compared with that in the same period in history) caused by El Nino and anomalies of atmosphere-ocean circulation system.
(2) Because of the differences between the national economic supporting capacity and development of water conservancy projects, the drought resistance ability of different countries is different.
Among them, the distribution of irrigated areas is uneven in Cambodia and the ability of drought resistance in different regions is different. The number of irrigation projects and irrigation area in Lao PDR is relatively small and drought resistance ability is slightly inadequate.
Vietnam and Thailand have built relatively high-density, large-scale irrigation projects and irrigation network, which is expected to provide a better engineering guarantee for the development of drought resistance.
Suggestions
(1) Exploit potentialities and enhance the ability of countries to cope with natural disasters.
The Mekong River Basin countries have established organization system for disaster prevention and reduction to deal with drought disasters.
Although there is a significant correlation between the national drought relief capacity and economic and social development level, the consensus of the whole basin on improving the drought relief structural measures is also very important.
Based on the viewpoint of engineering, though countries like Thailand and Vietnam have taken adequate measures to combat drought, it seems still necessary to enhance the drought relief engineering construction to cope with severe drought.
(2) Make overall plans and coordinate to enhance the disaster mitigation ability from the whole-basin perspective.
Though the reservoirs on Lancang mainstream have played a “supplementary” role by using the storage and regulation capacity and released about 140 percent more water than that of natural flow this year to the Mekong River during January to June 2019, the low water level status of hydrological stations on lower reaches of the Mekong mainstream still occurred.
It is due to the fact that the flow contribution of Lancang River to the whole Lancang-Mekong basin is only around 20% and 11% in dry season and wet season respectively. When whole-basin drought happens, more measures should be considered from the whole-basin perspective.
It is suggested that the tributaries along the mekong river should play more important role in regulating and storing water. Besides, The reservoirs built in the Mekong River Basin have a capacity of more than 20 billion m3.
It is suggested that the possible positive role of these reservoirs in drought relief in all countries and the whole basin should be studied in depth, and the impacts of drought relief projects on the water disasters in the downstream regions or countries should be deeply analyzed while they alleviate the local disasters to lay a foundation for the overall coordination of the basin.
(3) Make full use of the regional cooperation mechanisms to promote the whole-basin cooperation level.
Among the several cooperation mechanisms in the Lancang-Mekong region (MRC, GMS, Golden Quadrangle Program etc.), the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) mechanism was established by all six riparian countries of Lancang-Mekong River in 2016, which provides a new platform for dialogue and cooperation from the whole basin perspective.
Water resources is one of the five priority areas under the LMC mechanism. Joint Working Groups on water resources under the LMC mechanism consisting of line agencies of the six LMC countries and the Lancang-Mekong Water Resources Cooperation Center established in Beijing, which mark the establishment of Lancang-Mekong Water Resources mechanism in 2017.
The following cooperation topics are recommended to be carried out under the Lancang-Mekong Water Resources mechanism.
They include enhancing information sharing and countermeasure consultation through Joint Working Groups on water resources of LMC, research on climate change impacts and adaptation measures in the Lancang-Mekong basin and research on joint operation of the reservoirs in the whole basin, so as to make full use of the regulation capacity to cope with natural disasters.
Note: Dr. Liu Hui was the project leader of “Joint Assessment on Flood Prevention and Drought Relief in Mekong River Basin (Phase I)”, which was carried out by experts from six member countries under the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation mechanism in 2018.
She is also among the core experts of the joint research “Hydrological Impacts of the Lancang Hydropower Cascade on Downstream Extreme Events” in cooperation with MRC and IWMI.
