Prolonged drought brings another crisis to Thailand
By Sutin Wannabovorn
PRATHUM THANI, Thailand (Reuters): Thailand has reached the threshold of economic recovery only to find itself on the brink of another calamity -- drought.
Thailand faces its worst dry season in decades: across the country, irrigation canals are drying up, crops are shriveling and the parched earth of the countryside is crumbling away.
In the cities, people have been urged to cut down sharply on water use. In some areas, water restrictions have been imposed.
In citrus-growing areas outside the capital, 20 km (12 miles) of roadway built beside irrigation canals have collapsed as farmers drain channels, leaving the earthen embankments to become brittle and to crumble away beneath the drum of traffic.
The orange planters of Prathum Thani say their only hope is to find enough water to keep the orange trees alive. They have already given up worrying about the yield in this year's crop.
"This year is the worst crisis for me, so I only hope to pump enough water to keep my orange trees alive and enough water for my rice field for the next couple of months," said Sawai Ngernpotdaung, 60, who has about three hectares (eight acres) of rice and 1.6 hectares of orange orchard.
Thailand, which hopes this year to begin climbing out of its deepest recession in 50 years, relies on agriculture for 15 percent of economic output.
It blames the El Nio weather pattern, which plagued Southeast Asia with drought and fire over 1997 and last year, for the sorry state of Thailand's water reserves.
Even before 1999 dawned, the country's reservoirs had been drastically depleted, agriculture ministry officials said.
National water reserves, held behind giant dams in the country's mountainous north, have fallen to 3.69 billion cubic metres, down from seven to eight billion a year ago and 14.5 billion at their recent peak in 1996.
Prathum Thani's orange-growers say drought, a normal feature of the dry season in the first half of each year, has arrived early. Farmers are bracing for serious damage to their fruit.
They are panicking, pumping water too quickly from the area's 14 irrigation canals and roads are collapsing as a result.
Officials say dozens of local people have been seen digging, building dikes and pumping the last water from irrigation canals. Underground water levels are falling.
"Farmers are rushing to pump water for their farms and this has caused large damage to the roads," a district official told Reuters as he watched farmers pump the canals dry.
"We are concerned violence will break out, so we have to do our best to share and rotate the water supply," he said.
Local farmers say they have little choice but to take as much water as they can to save their orchards from drought.
"We are now facing a water crisis and I anticipate big damage to the fruit," said Chao Prapasawat, headman of Nong Sau village and owner of an orange plantation.
Chao was speaking to Reuters as he supervised workers pumping water from a drying canal to his plantation.
"I make about two million baht (US$54,800) a year from my 50 rai (eight ha) orange plantation," he said.
About 12,800 ha (31,600 acres) are planted with oranges in Nong Sau district which grows up to 300 tones of oranges a year.
Chao said the planters had suffered a severe water shortage six years ago when some 70 percent of the fruit was damaged.
Most years, irrigation canals begin to run dry around March and April. "But this year the canal has begun to dry in early January and by April the real disaster will come when I anticipate orange planters will go bankrupt," Chao said.
In 1994, when another drought hit the town, planters lost billions of baht from damage to their fruit.
But this time, credit is about as scarce as rain.
"Then, we survived and recovered because people did business with credit. But now in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) era, farmers invest cash and the only way out is to commit suicide," Chao said.
The IMF is leading a $17.2 billion bailout package for the Thai economy.