Dam officials and dammed people

31 July 1997

Supporters and opponents of the Kaeng Sua Ten dam project rallied at this week’s Chiang Rai cabinet. The minister promoting the project complained the protesters were not local people. But Kaeng Sua Ten is not just a local issue.

The Eighth Plan and the draft constitution promise a new era of development. A higher priority for the environment. More participation. And a focus on sustainable development. The Kaeng Sua Ten dam project is a test case for the transition to this new era.

The strains of this transition are now on show. The project was born in an earlier era. Some government agencies made their commitment to Kaeng Sua Ten under a different philosophy. Changing course is difficult. Environmental concerns are an unnecessary complication. Participation gets in the way. Sustainability is less important than short-term cost-benefit. The clashes between these old and new approaches are reverberating through the bodies reviewing the project.

Many of the government agencies involved (especially the Irrigation Department and the NESDB) approach evaluation in a particular way. They ask: is there a benefit which justifies the investment cost. If so, then the social and environmental impact can be managed somehow.

Kaeng Sua Ten has a clear a benefit in terms of irrigation. So for these agencies, if some forest has to be flooded and some people moved, these are just necessary costs.

But the environmental pressure groups approach evaluation in a different way. They ask: do the risks and costs outweigh the benefits. In the case of Kaeng Sua Ten, the recent Chula study was quite clear that they do. Invaluable forest will be lost, species destroyed, fisheries disrupted. The site is "too valuable a biological area to allow a dam to destroy it". The priorities have been reversed. The environmental threat is too great. If we need the irrigation, we will have to do it in some other way.

The Irrigation Department, which owns the project, finds this very frustrating. The Department is good at building dams for irrigating rice. Its whole history is bound up with this activity. Kaeng Sua Ten will irrigate a lot of rice. "Our duty is to provide water", a Department official said in exasperation at a recent meeting, "our job is not about protecting the environment".

Khon Kaen University has proposed an alternative plan with 5,000 small-scale weirs rather than one big dam. It costs a fraction of the dam scheme, does not threaten the ecology, and provides some irrigation, though less than the dam. But the Irrigation Department is not interested. Such a scheme, said a Department official, "is not our kind of work".

The official agencies treat the ritual of ecological impact studies as just a matter of form. At the start of this year, the Irrigation Department produced a report claiming that the social and environmental impact is manageable. Recently, the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) submitted a report claiming there is no earthquake risk from the geological fault lines in the area.

But under the Environment Act, there is now the Office of Environmental Policy and Planning (OEPP), which watches out for impact reports which have been compiled for form’s sake. It labelled the DMR survey as "crude", "not detailed enough", and "not using proper methods". The DMR has reacted with pique. "We are not a research institute", a department official said. A survey of the required level of detail, according to the Deputy Director General, would take 200 years.

Among all these official bodies, there is a growing exasperation. The project has clear benefits. The "side-effects" can be managed. "If we take research so seriously," said the DMR official, "we will get nowhere. If we were a private company acting this way, we would go bankrupt." At Chiang Rai, the cabinet fell in with this view: the DMR report is not perfect, but good enough. It’s okay to build a dam in a geologically high-risk area on the basis of a report which the government’s own environmental watchdog calls "crude".

These official bodies, and the political backers of the dam, clearly have no interest in the environmental consequences. They are equally uneasy with participation.

Participation is very much about information. Who creates the information. Who controls it. Who has access to it.

On Kaeng Sua Ten, there is now a lot of information. Thirty million baht worth of studies stretching over almost two decades. But the studies conflict. Will three villages be inundated or fourteen. Is the forest destroyed worth 600 million baht or 4.4 billion. What really is the planned height of the dam. Who decides which version of all this information is right? Yingphan has sent back the recent Chula study and asked for changes in the data. Who keeps the information? Some years ago there was a detailed contour map showing the impact of the dam at different heights. Many people remember seeing it. Officials now deny it ever existed.

What information is good information? Take flooding. The political supporters of the dam have seized on the issue of flooding to drum up public support for the project. They give the impression that the dam will prevent flooding in the lower Yom valley, and possibly even in Bangkok. But this is downright deceitful. The dam was not designed to prevent flooding. None of the feasibility studies claim any benefit in this respect.

The Yom river accounts for only eight percent of the flow in the Chaophraya system, so any impact on flooding from Nakhon Sawan to Bangkok will be minimal. Even in the Yom basin, Kaeng Sua Ten will have little effect. The dam is too far upriver, so seven-eighths of the area draining into the river is below the dam. The dam is too small. It could hold flood waters back for only 2-3 days. At best Kaeng Sua Ten will delay one-eighth of the flood for a few days. The people who think the dam will keep them dry are being fooled.

The real test of participation is the role allotted to the villagers directly affected by the project.

A few years ago, villagers in the affected area were surprised to find that the project had been revived. They had not been informed or consulted. The officials explained, quite innocently, that they did not want to panic the villages until after the cabinet had decided that the project was definitely going ahead. In other words, until it was too late for the villagers to object.

More recently, officials have stage-managed public meetings in support of the project. Villagers who turned up to listen have been claimed as "supporters" of the dam. Some subsequently were ostracised by their neighbours as a result.

Now the villagers don’t go to these meetings. They won’t let officials into the site area. And they don’t trust what the government says.

Yingphan, the Science Minister and strong supporter of the project, says there is 22,000 rai of land available for resettlement. The Irrigation Department claims to have created "sufficient infrastructure" at the resettlement site. The villagers have been to look. As everywhere, the land is theoretically empty (i.e. untitled) but in reality occupied by long-established settler families. The villagers have also been to look at other dam resettlement projects. And the experience does not fill them with confidence. This emerged in a recent meeting on the project:

Village leader: "Why should we believe your resettlement plans? We have seen what happened in past dam projects."

Official: "But we must build this dam. The villagers need to sacrifice for society. Suppose this time, the government gives you a firm promise that things will work out."

Village leader (playfully): "Yes we can sacrifice, if you guarantee us a million baht compensation per household if the government’s promise turns out to be false."

Official (ruffled): "On that basis, we have nothing to discuss."