Students learning about fish on the Yom river.
Once again, the plan to destroy one of the last wild rivers in Thailand has come back to life — plans are in high gear to build a dam at the Kang Sua Ten rapids on the Yom river in Phrae.
We’ve run a course on the Yom for several years, Human Rights and The Environment: Rivers, Dams and Local Struggles. A big part of the course is comparing the Mun river (already dammed and destroyed by the Thai state) and the Yom (impacted by a weir down river, but still vibrant and alive). We paddle the river with local elders, learn about the fish and ecology of the river, and learn about their struggle to keep the river from being dammed.
The excuse for years has been that it will control flooding, or in more recent years, to prevent drought. As the villagers know, however, that is a lie. Flooding in the provinces downstream has been shown to be the result of local rainfall and poor drainage — not due to water carried down from the upper Yom. But that isn’t why they want to build the dam.
The real reason? The Yom river basin is also home to the last stand of golden teak left in Thailand — worth millions of dollars. So whoever gets to dam the Yom not only gets to embezzle the money from the construction project (which we know from the research of Ajaan Pasuk is likely to be between 40% to 60% of the budget), but they also get the real prize — millions of dollars in rare golden teak.
The budget alone is about 11 billion Baht.
Thai pu yai (influential “big” people) seem to care only for money. They are also not stupid — they are clearly taking advantage of the political turmoil in Thailand to push through this project, hoping that people will not notice, will be too busy rebuilding their lives after the violence of May, and too busy to care and do something about it.
Some people have noticed, and now the Royal Irrigation Department is arguing for two “small” dams on the river — trying to back off, and make it sounds like it won’t destroy the river. But it will — it will kill it, and destroy the ecology and the community.
And once the river is gone, it is gone forever. Along with the livelihoods of the local community, the famers, young activists and others. We know, and the community knows — just look at the Mun river after it was dammed.
The things that is most galling, of course, is that the dam is both unnecessary and won’t solve the problems it is said to solve. But the lack of scientific and empirical support has never stopped the building of a dam in Thailand before — as we see every spring as we live with and learn from the villagers impacted by the building of the Pak Mun Dam — thousands of lives and communities destroyed, fish stocks devastated along with the people who fished, all for nothing but a inefficient dam that doesn’t even pay for itself with the little electricity it does produce.
So they are doing everything they can to put another dam on the Yom.
This will destroy the lives of the community of teachers, mentors and leaders who have shared their lives, knowledge and wisdom with our instructors and students.
Our friends.
We will be doing everything we can to raise awareness about this, and hope to play a role in stopping the dam.
We’ll keep you posted.
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Three articles to read:
Yom River Dam Will Devastate the Area
