Lessons on hydropower management

(Baonghean) -At the 6th session of the 13th National Assembly, delegates heard a report on the review of the country's master plan for hydropower.

Accordingly, the Prime Minister has agreed to remove from the planning 6 cascade hydropower projects and 418 small hydropower projects out of a total of 1,239 approved hydropower projects; continue to review 158 hydropower projects and not consider 172 potential hydropower locations, only invest in construction after 2015 for 4 cascade hydropower projects and 132 small hydropower projects if ensuring efficiency and minimizing negative impacts on the environment and society. Nghe An alone has removed 7 projects and 14 potential hydropower locations out of a total of 44 approved hydropower projects.

According to the assessment of the National Assembly's Committee on Science, Technology and Environment, the quality of hydropower planning is very limited, many projects have been eliminated because they are not feasible, about 37% of the eliminated projects are small hydropower projects. The construction quality and safety level of many hydropower projects are very low. For small hydropower projects, nearly 30% of the dams have not been inspected, nearly 55% of the dam owners do not have a flood and storm prevention plan, about 66% of the dams do not have an approved protection plan, only about 6% of the investors have completed marking the boundary of the exploitation area of ​​the project.

According to the report of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the forest area taken for hydropower is more than 50,000 hectares, while the area of ​​​​replacement forests is only 3.7% of the forest area cleared for hydropower. Due to the water blocking for hydropower, rivers are exhausted, the downstream is increasingly intruded by salt water, and the traffic function of rivers is deformed. The prediction of disasters and risks to humans is not carefully calculated, many hydropower plants are like giant bags of water hanging over the heads of residential areas, if unfortunately a dam failure occurs, there is no way to avoid it. At large and small hydropower plants, the damage in cases of emergency flood discharge and dam failure has not been fully assessed to have response plans. Most small hydropower plants do not announce water discharge schedules, causing great damage to people during the rainy and stormy season.

According to the assessment of National Assembly delegates, hydropower planning has too many loopholes. The planning process only stops at surveying the hydropower cascade, that is, only surveying the flow to see what the hydropower capacity of the river is like to approve the planning, while factors affecting the environment and society are ignored. The widespread development of small hydropower projects is not only ineffective but also causes great harm to the environment (out of a total of 1,293 approved hydropower projects, there are 1,109 small hydropower projects but only contribute about 26% of electricity output). The supervision of hydropower construction is almost completely abandoned by the construction units because the projects are all carried out in highland and mountainous areas, so it is inevitable that the quality of the projects is not guaranteed, such as the spillway of the Song Tranh 2 Hydropower Plant in Quang Nam.

Although the Government has directed to stop 40% of hydropower projects, when discussing the master plan, many National Assembly delegates proposed to only approve the elimination of ineffective hydropower projects that cause great harm. The problem now is to seriously and scientifically survey and re-evaluate all 815 hydropower projects retained in the plan to calculate the socio-economic efficiency and harm to the environment, production and people's lives to decide to maintain each hydropower project. When hydropower projects were deployed massively throughout the country, scientists, experts and the press issued warnings but they were not taken seriously, leading to the current consequences. This is a valuable lesson for functional sectors and localities in hydropower management.

Tran Hong Co