Huyện Đại Lộc District, Quảng Nam province, VN

Power plant blamed for worsening floods in Quang Nam Water is released at the reservoir of the A Vuong hydro power plant A hydroelectric plant in the central province of Quang Nam released water without warning, making it impossible for the province to take timely measures against flooding, a senior official said on Friday. However, whether the discharge from the A Vuong Hydroelectric Plant worsened floods caused by typhoon Ketsana late last month as mentioned in the press and by local officials is yet to be determined. Tran Quang Hoai, who led an inspection into the incident as ordered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Department, sand further inspections and consultations with experts were needed before final conclusions were reported to the government. Reporting to the inspectorate at a meeting on the same day with A Vuong Hydroelectric Joint-stock Company (AVC) which manages the plant, Pham Minh Tuan of the provincial storm and flood control team said as per regulations, AVC had to inform the province of its water release six hours in advance so that it could evacuate residents from low lying areas downstream the Vu Gia River. “But the company failed to do so,” Tuan said. AVC, in fact, informed the provincial authorities of its move at 12 p.m. on September 29 when Ketsana was hanging over Quang Nam and started discharging water at 1 p.m. at 1,000 cubic meters per second. Three hours later it increased the flow to nearly 3,000 cubic meters per second, bringing the total discharge to over 149 cubic meters on October 1. Nguyen Thanh Quang, vice director of Quang Nam Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, also blamed AVC, saying the discharge of nearly 150 million cubic meters of water while downstream water levels were increasing submerged many villages in Dai Loc District. The floods then, in fact, rose higher than those of previous years by nearly 1.5 meters, he added. “Of course A Vuong plant couldn’t cause great floods all by itself, but its water release at a ‘sensitive point of time’ was just like the last straw,” he told the meeting following the preliminary inspection. “Water from A Vuong gushing out in great force put the whole lowlands of Vu Gia and Thu Bon rivers under water, trapping thousands of local people,” Quang added. It is estimated that Dai Loc District suffered over VND600 billion (US$33.7 million) of the VND3.5 trillion ($196.63 million) – in losses inflicted on Quang Nam by the ninth storm to hit the East Sea this year. If AVC had released water on September 28 before the floods came, its reservoir would have had space to store about 60 million cubic meters to contain the floods, Quang Nam’s storm and flood control team said. “AVC paid attention only to its power generation efficiency and the safety of its work. It did not care about floods in the lowlands, which is the most basic shortcoming.” Not responsible On the other hand, AVC Board Chairman Nguyen Van Le said it was wrong to accuse their water release for heavily flooding Vu Gia River’s lowland areas. It is estimated that A Vuong reservoir’s basin receives 1.23 billion cubic meters of water on average a year, accounting for some 14.4 percent of the Vu Gia River’s basin, Le said, citing statistics compiled by the agriculture ministry’s Institute of Water Sources Planning. Based on this, the reservoir’s overflow must have accounted for 7.15 percent of that of Vu Gia on September 29 and 9.65 percent the next day, according to Le, concluding that A Vuong’s water discharge in fact made up only one-twentieth of the river’s water amount then. Le even said A Vuong reservoir helped lessen floods in the lowlands by storing another 146.1 million cubic meters of water. “Under the procedure approved by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, A Vuong helped cut down last floods by 832 percent,” he said. However, Quang didn’t agree, saying the figures given by AVC were not correct. Source: Thanh Nien, Tuoi Tre Logs choke central rivers Residents of Dai Cuong commune in Quang Nam Province salvage logs from Vu Gia River Tree trunks and sawn logs washed down in the floods in central Vietnam caused by Typhoon Ketsana have jammed rivers and buried floodplains in Quang Nam and Kon Tum provinces. On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of people came from near and far to gather and cut up the piles of stray wood around Dien Binh Bridge in Kon Tum’s Dien Binh Commune Across an area buried under thousands of cubic meters of timber, they chopped and sawed away then took the wood home or sold it on the spot for one to two million dong per cubic meter for common trees, Lao Dong reports. Their booty also included rare timber like trac thoi (Dalbergia tonkinensis prain), which reportedly fetched VND26 million per cubic meter in one case. It was the same at Quang Hue Bridge in Quang Nam Province, where jammed logs have covered the surface of the Vu Gia River since September 29. Hundreds of riverbank homes in Dong Phuoc Village were damaged by large pieces of wood carried down the swollen Vu Gia River in the wake of Ketsana’s lashing of central Vietnam last Tuesday, Tuoi Tre correspondents observed. People from Dai Loc, Dien Ban and Duy Xuyen districts came in their thousands to gather the timber. “There was so much wood lying around, we had people coming from all over to exploit the opportunity. There were even fights over it,” Nguyen Van Truc, chairman of the Dai Loc District People’s Committee, told Lao Dong. Forest rangers and police were called in to deal with the situation and oversee the timber’s removal, Truc said. By noon on Monday, thousands of big logs had been cleared from the Vu Gia River, yet many people were still wandering around looking for wood. Unclear origin Phan Thanh Lam, head of Quang Nam’s Forest Rangers Department, says it’s rare for the floodwaters to bring down so many big logs and attributes the pile-up to the hydroelectric dams and resettlement areas farther up the Vu Gia River. While he cannot tell whether the logs were legally cut or not, chief forest ranger Nguyen Nhung of Dai Loc District is certain they originated in the Nam Giang and Phuoc Son forests in Quang Nam. Trinh Xuan Loc, vice chairman of Dak Glei District in Kon Tum, thinks some of the sawn logs came from the headwaters of a river in Dak Blo and Dak Nhoong districts, where state agencies had felled trees along the Cambodian border but not shipped the logs out. Ha Cong Tuan, head of the Agriculture Ministry’s Forest Protection Department, is also puzzled. “The logs are of various origins so it’s difficult to identify them and determine exactly where they came from. There’s no doubt that some of the timber was cut down illegally,” says Tuan. Nguyen Ngoc Lung of the Vietnam Forestry Science and Technology Association has a different view and says it’s simple to determine which logs were cut down legally as they are stamped with pertinent information by forest rangers. According to Lung, some of the logs carried down by the floodwaters had been cut with the government’s authorization, and some had been felled by illegal loggers. Hanging threat In the meantime, Typhoon Parma, which has killed at least 16 people in the Philippines since it made landfall on Luzon Island on Saturday, is looming over the East Sea and could be a threat to Vietnam. Bui Minh Tang, director of the National Weather Center, said yesterday there were conflicting forecasts for Parma coming from international weather bureaus. On Monday afternoon, the tenth storm of the year was located 850 kilometers east of the Hoang Sa (Paracel) Islands. While most meteorologists think Parma will revisit Luzon before heading for the Pacific Ocean, the European Weather Forecasting Center say it will strike the Vietnamese mainland next week, Tang said. Parma’s intentions are obscure, in contrast to the stark reality in central Vietnam, where the number of fatalities and injuries keeps climbing even though the typhoon has been long gone. The provincial authorities blame the worsening casualties on carelessness. For instance, Dai Loc District in Quang Nam Province had recorded eight deaths by Monday evening, including six after the floodwaters receded, according to vice chairman Phan Duc Tinh of the district’s flood protection committee. Five of them died after falling at home while clearing up. The sixth person was fishing out timber from the Vu Gia River near Quang Hue Bridge when he fell in and was drowned. Most of the 237 casualties since the floodwaters went down are due to falling, Tinh says. It’s grim too in Kon Tum Province, where the death toll rose to 49 on Monday from 33 two days before. The death toll from Ketsana to date stands at 164 people in Vietnam, nearly 300 in the Philippines, and 17 in Cambodia. The storm is also being blamed for landslides that buried two villages and damaged bridges in Quang Nam Province. So far little is known about the losses and casualties, the local flood and storm protection committee said on Monday. Source: Thanh Nien, Tuoi Tre Dispute continues over central hydro company’s actions An inspection has been carried out on the A Vuong hydroelectric reservoir in the central province of Quang Nam following recent reports that the company in charge worsened floods caused by Typhoon Ketsana. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and other relevant agencies conducted the investigation October 16 and held a subsequent meeting to discuss the issue. The AVC company is accused of releasing water from its reservoir, worsening floods following Typhoon Ketsana (Photo: Tuoi tre) Attending the meeting were leaders from the company under investigation – the A Vuong Joint-stock Company (AVC) – representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and other related agencies. Provincial officials blamed the hydroelectric company for releasing excessive water from its reservoir during the recent Typhoon Ketsana floods, heavily submerging the Vu Gia River’s floodplains. AVC was responsible for worsening floods in lowland areas when they released water from the plant, said the provincial Steering Board of Flood and Storm Prevention. Water flowing from the A Vuong reservoir caused Vu Gia River in Dai Loc District to swell to dangerous levels, exceeding the dangerous warning level by 1.5 m and causing damage to districts in lowland areas along Vu Gia and Thu Bon rivers, a representative from the Steering Board of Flood and Storm Prevention added. Representatives from the plant denied any wrongdoing. AVC Board Chairman Nguyen Van Le said the reservoir in fact contained much of the floodwater and helped lessen the storm’s impact. Director of the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Nguyen Thanh Quang, rejected Le’s statement, adding that the company and the steering board had never reached an agreement on releasing water from the reservoirs. Mr. Quang, however, said that since the province and AVC were at loggerheads about releasing reservoir water, AVC was left with no choice but to act. This indicated a serious flaw in the management of the hydroelectric reservoirs, he added. Mr. Quang also dismissed the suggestion that the Vu Gia River’s floodplains were heavily submerged due to a narrow current caused by waste and wood. Inspectors will continue investigating the matter, said Tran Quang Hoai, deputy head of the Flood and Storm Prevention and Dyke Protection Agency. In the future, AVC should closely cooperate with the province when releasing water in a bid to reduce damage, Hoai added. By N.Khoi - Translated by Uyen Phuong Pounding surf, floods flush out guilty secrets 08:02' 10/10/2009 (GMT+7) VietNamNet Bridge – Typhoon Ketsana has revealed shoddy construction in Da Nang and flushed huge quanties of illegally harvested timber downriver in Quang Nam and Kon Tum provinces, VietNamNet and Tuoi Tre report. Weak walls no match for storm Typhoon Ketsana has seriously damaged Nguyen Tat Thanh Street, Da Nang City’s coastal road. Surprisingly, up to half of this road is reported damaged. The surprise is that after Typhoon Xangsane damaged the same road severely in 2006, local authorities decided to invest 3.3 billion dong to mend it permanently. “Thanks to” the typhoon, a secret was exposed: there was no steel in any of the broken sections of embankment erected to protect Nguyen Tat Thanh Street. It turned out that the dike was simply an unreinforced concrete wall so it was easily broken by the raging waves. A preliminary report from the city Department of Transportation said that 70 percent of the road is undermined, causing very deep holes. Thousands of paving bricks were scraped off by waves. Many coastal handrails and staircases to the beach were broken. Worse, the pounding surf destroyed fourteen sections of the dike, each twenty to twenty-five meters long. Sea water poured through these broken sections to damage the coastal road. The eastern abutment of the Phu Loc bridge collapsed completely. A 5 meter section of the roadway was torn away, leaving only a wide and dangerous hole. Local people are questioning why such an important dike was not properly reinforced by a steel core though several billion dong were spent on the work only a year ago. By comparison, a temporary fence around the Daewon Company’s Da Phuoc international urban area project survived intact though it also faced the fury of the sea. VietNamNet questioned Dang Viet Dung, director of the Da Nang Department of Transportation, who said that he has to review the work design. Da Nang residents are also reporting that some ten meter high electric poles have collapsed because they were buried in holes only one meter deep or less. 70cm-1m depth while the poles are 10m high and weighing hundreds of kilos. It is considered lucky that the heavy poles did not hit anyone as they fell. Illicit timber washes downstream into plain sight After Typhoon Ketsana, thousands of people who live along the Vu Gia River in Dai Loc district, Quang Nam province flocked to the Quang Hue bridge in Dai Cuong commune to collect logs lodged against the bridge’s piers. The scene was repeated at many rivers and bridges in Kon Tum province. By noon October 5, timber from thousands more trees was being fished from of Quang Nam’s Vu Gia river by forest rangers and local people. Logs washed downstream by the flood damaged hundreds of houses along the river in Dai Loc village. Nguyen Nhung, the chief ranger of the Dai Loc Forest Protection Station, said it is still not possible to confirm the sources of this huge volume of wood. He said it likely came from the old growth forests of Nam Giang and Phuoc Son in Quang Nam. “This phenomenon is definitely associated with hydro-power development, road building projects and resettlement projects upstream,” Nhung said. In Kon Tum province, a huge expanse of logs has lodged against the piers of the Dien Binh bridge in Dak To district. More are seen at Tri Le bridge in the same district. Many logs were sawn already, including many precious species of timber. A local official, Trinh Xuan Loc, said that the wood is from the upstream communes like Dak Blo, Dak Nhoong and Dak Long. However, Lam Quang Van, deputy Party chief of Tu Mo Rong district, said all forests in that district are strictly controlled, so he didn’t know the source of the sawn wood. In Hanoi, Ha Cong Tuan, chief of the Forest Protection Department, told Tuoi Tre newspaper that the reports of logs washing downstream in large quantities on rivers in Kon Tum and Quang Nam had been confirmed. Tuan has issued orders to Forest Protection branches to count and classify the wood tat has collected. Tuan speculated that the flotsam includes some legally-exploited wood as well as illegal timber. He admitted that illegal harvesting occurs in Quang Nam province. Through this situation, Tuan said, the Forest Protection Department will get a better understanding of its severity. Meanwhile, Nguyen Ngoc Lung of the Vietnam Association of Forestry Science and Technology said that it is easy to determine the legality of the timber. He said legally-cut wood is always stamped by rangers. VietNamNet/Tuoi Tre