Build the dam or we’ll destroy the forest

5 February 2001

The Thai state is slowly learning how to listen to its citizens. For two days, supporters and opponents of the Phong Khun Petch (PKP) dam in Chaiyaphum aired their views before an independent panel. It was not a “public hearing” because these have become exercises in conflict. Rather it was just “collecting opinions”. Five to seven hundred people came to listen. Seven local groups aired their views. The only moment tinged with violence came when the nai amphoe (district officer) jabbed his finger angrily at the chairman over a point of procedure.

PKP is not a big project. In fact it’s tiddly—a small earth dam with a modest target of increasing irrigation down the upper Chi river. But it has become a big issue. A handful of villages which live from gathering forest products will be flooded out. They opposed the project. Environmentalists supported them. The forest is not lush, but it’s one of the last sites of the bai lan, the tree whose fibre was once used as paper. Over three years ago, the project was put on hold.

The supporters spoke first. Villagers who live just downstream from the dam site have real reasons to support it. This area lies in rain shadow. Even in the monsoon, they can lose the whole crop because the rain disappears for two weeks. In the dry season, cropping is impossible. They go off to factories and construction sites. PKP promises to turn them from precarious single-croppers into comfortable double-croppers. They want it badly.

A second group also supports. Over the last five years, Chaiyaphum town has flooded badly. This rarely happened before. Last year it happened three times, and the floodwaters stayed a long time. Townspeople suffered and lost money. They believe the PKP dam will hold back the floodwater.

This urban support changes the politics. The townspeople are more sophisticated, more monied, more influential. They have new arguments in favour of the dam. It will attract tourists who will generate income.

The third group of supporters is more sinister—the local politicians and men of influence. The hearing is supposed to be a platform for those directly affected. But somehow these people climb onto the agenda. They add nothing new, but repeat the arguments. More first crop. More second crop. No flooding. More tourist income. Their grasp of local reality is so poor that a villager has to cut in and correct one speaker’s basic geography. But their participation sends a message. There are interests at stake other than irrigation, floods and bai lan. Important things like land speculation and construction contracts. The local MP turns up in his shiny four-wheel-drive and his flashy brandname shirt. He is an enthusiastic supporter. He has just leapt nimbly from New Aspiration to Thai Rak Thai. He doesn’t come in to listen but lingers outside. He is a presence. Some of the supporters come out for a quiet conversation.

Then comes the threat. The last speaker among the supporters is worried that the panel might actually listen to the opponents. They will tell you lies, he says. There is no environmental value. The forest is gone already. The bai lan are almost finished. The villagers don’t really earn an income from forest produce. Besides, if the dam is not built, his co-villagers will go on illegally logging what remains of the forest until there is nothing left for sure.

According to the supporters, all the farmers will become rich, out-migration will cease, the townspeople will keep their feet dry, and the province will be bathed in prosperity. But the extent of irrigation imagined by the various supporters is three to ten times the amount in the plan, and way beyond the capacity of the water stored. The flood prevention was not part of the project design. A few moments of study shows that it’s a complete fantasy. At most the dam can hold back 5 percent of the flow in the Chi river. The runoff flooding the town is coming from a different direction. A new bypass is probably damming the runoff and causing the floods. Hopes for tourist income have been generated by TV pictures of trainloads visiting the Pasak dam. The PKP project has become not a dam but a thevada, a goddess bringing everything good.

Reality lies just forty kilometres away at Lamkhanchu, a small earth dam like PKP. The benefits claimed were just the same—more first crop, more second crop, more tourist income generation. It was finished four years ago. Downstream there is no sign of flourishing two-crop agriculture, just parched fields of cassava and sugarcane. As with PKP, there was no plan for distributing the water. Throughout this tract, the rivers are cut deep into land, and the geography is not easy for contour channels. Without big pumps and investment in channels, the water won’t reach any except those on the riverbank. At present the only beneficiary of Lamkhanchu’s water is a big cassava factory.

Tourism? There are four pickup trucks parked by the reservoir edge and a few kids splashing about in rubber tires. Even this meagre attendance (on a public holiday) is generating no income.

A few metres away are the project’s victims. The villagers from the flood zone accepted the offer of money compensation. But the payment was so slow it barely covered the debts they incurred while waiting. Nothing came of the promises of resettlement land. Three to four hundred families are squatting in makeshift bamboo shelters along the road. Another of the refugee camps left behind by development.

PKP was planned in an era when forest still seemed expendable, and people could still find new land. Now both these conditions have vanished. But like the pipelines, power stations, and other dams, the project had gone a long way before civil society became strong enough to demand a proper economic, social and environmental accounting. By then, more was at stake than irrigation and bai lan. Again Lankhamchu gives a hint. The road along the dam crest is riven with splits, hastily repaired. The water level is much lower than expected at this time of year. Is the dam not being properly used because it’s substandard? Will the same thing happen at PKP? Why, asked the opponents, has the PKP construction contract been awarded to a company with a phantom address in a pharmacy shop in Ratchaburi?