Experts worry about Mekong River power plant

Vietnamese scientists and environmentalists have raised worries over wide-ranging threats posed by Laos’ building of a power plant on the Mekong River.

They said cautiousness must be taken into account for the construction of the 1,260 MW Xayaburi hydro-electric power plant on the mainstream of the Mekong river, which runs through Cambodia , Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and China.

At the Vietnam Mekong Commission’s consultation conference on the Xayaburi power plant in Halong city on February 22, the scientists and environmentalists said the to-be-built power plant will affect not only the aquatic society and population in the river but also its water resources, food security and the density of alluvial land.

Lao plans to kick off the construction of the Xayaburi hydro-electric power plant in April this year. The plant is designed to have an 810 metre water dam, about 1,930 km from Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

With the estimated cost of up to $3.5 billion, the power plant is expected to be built in eight years. It will make 2,100 people move to other places for resettlement and trigger socio-economic impacts on more than 202,000 people who live near the dam. It is expected to meet only 6 per cent of electricity demand in the region by 2030.

The Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development estimated that the Mekong River would bring about 26 million tonnes of alluvial land to the Mekong River Delta annually and this annum amount will be axed to 7 million tonnes due to the building of Xayaburi plant.

The participants also voiced the need to invite international experts to join in assessing the Xayaburi plant’s impacts on the entire Mekong River basin.

The governments from the Mekong river-benefiting countries are yet to have any official say on the issue.

However, experts from Cambodia and Thailand have, at consultation conferences, expressed concerns over the plant’s impacts on their countries’ socio-economic and environmental development. – VIR

Tags: Mekong River power plant