Asia Times: Mammoth Vietnamese dam on hold again


	July 4, 2001	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Mammoth Vietnamese dam on hold again

HANOI - Work on the country's biggest hydroelectric power plant in the northern mountainous province of Son La, dogged by a prolonged debate on its feasibility, is scheduled to begin in 2004.

Director of the Pre-Investment Management Board (PIMB) for the plant, Vu Duc Thin, said the project, which was to have been built this year, has been delayed for a further three years due to technical and capital problems. He said that despite the government's approval of the project's feasibility study in 1998, the huge capital requirement and arguments about its technical design had time and again delayed construction.

Given its scale and importance, the National Assembly (NA) has devoted many working sessions to the Son La Dam, and Thin feels that the benefits that will accrue from it have made the authorities determined to go ahead with the project.

The NA Committee for Science, Technology and Environment has asked the government to perfect the project's methodology and secure more data to ensure the reliance of the feasibility study report. The committee also emphasized that relocation and settlement of households from the plant site was the most important task of the project.

The Son La power plant, which will be built on the Da River, will have a production capacity of 3,600MW when it is completed by 2016. It will be located upriver from the major hydroelectric plant at Hoa Binh which produces 1,920MW. The plant will have 10 generators each with a capacity of 360 MW. It will provide between 9 and 16 billion kWh per year, meeting the national demand for electricity by the time it is completed.

It is estimated that the plant will help save about 8 million tons of coal or 4 billion cubic meters of gas a year. The project is also slated to provide protection from flooding, supply water to lowlands during the dry season, facilitate development of marine transport, promote tourism, and contribute to economic restructuring in the northwestern region.

Thin said that the hydroelectric project includes a discharge structure capable of releasing an average of 15,000 cubic meters per second, which will considerably reduce the level of flooding in the Hong (Red) and Thai Binh deltas during the rainy season. It is reported that presently the flow of water in the Da River accounts for 40 to 78 percent of the flooding level in these regions.

In the dry season, the Son La reservoir will also help supply water to areas in the lower reaches of the Da River. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, these areas will witness an estimated 15 billion cubic meters shortage of water by 2020, and this will rise by another 5 billion cubic meters by 2040.

Thin revealed that the project needs a total investment of VND55.7 trillion (about US$4 billion), of which 70 percent will be raised from domestic sources and the remaining through foreign loans.

The most advanced technology will be used to construct the dam to ensure safety, he said. The 135-137 meter-high dam will be able to withstand the worst conditions including erosion, flooding and earthquakes, say experts from the Harza and Sweco companies which have contributed to the project's feasibility study and conducted research on a series of earthquakes in neighboring Lai Chau province.

Thin said that a sixth of the project's investment will be spent on moving and relocating almost 27,000 households from the project site. Each household will receive about $2,700. It is expected that NA delegates will take a final decision on the project design by the end of this year.

(Asia Pulse)

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