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dam-l LS: Remove Pak Mool dam, urges fish expert
Remove Pak Mool dam, urges fish expert
THE only solution to the problems in the Mool
River is to remove the controversial Pak Mool
Dam altogether, a tropical fish expert from the
US said yesterday.
Dr Tyson R Robert, a researcher at the
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, said
that opening the dam gates in the rainy season,
as demanded by villagers, was only a halfway
solution.
“Opening the gates permanently is still not the
solution – the real solution for the Mool River is
to remove the dam,” he said.
Robert, an ichthyologist who has studied fish in
the Mekong River basin for more than 20 years,
said the dam completely blocked the migration
of fish from the Mekong River to the Mool River
for feeding and spawning.
The fish ladder, built by the Electricity
Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) to
mitigate the dam’s impact on fisheries, was
described as useless by Robert.
Many fish species were too large to swim
upstream through the narrow concrete ladder.
And smaller fish became exhausted and sore
before reaching the upper part of the Mool
River through the ladder.
Robert explained that the life cycle of some
tropical fish required them to go upstream in
the rainy season and downstream in the dry
season. Even if the ladder worked, it could not
undo the crisis in the Mool River since it was
not designed for fish to swim downstream.
Even if some fish were able to reach the Mool
River, they would not necessarily survive, he
added.
“The ecosystem has been changed. This
section of the Mool is not a river or even a lake,
but a reservoir that is not a fit habitat for fish,”
he said.
Robert said that not only the Pak Mool Dam,
but all big dams in the country would have to be
decommissioned before the end of the current
Buddhist century. However, the
decommissioning should be carried out under
a carefully drawn up plan. He suggested that
the authority in charge of the decommissioning
should not be Egat itself.
“It’s not cheap or easy to do it, but the Thai
government cannot avoid it [if it is to restore the
river],” he said.
Robert said that the dam’s decommissioning
would not only help the fish farmers of the Mool
River basin, but would also serve as a warning
to the Thai government to review the direction
of the country’s development.
BY Pennapa Hongthong
The Nation
LAST MODIFIED: Wednesday, 07-Jun-00
12:37:23 EDT
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Aviva Imhof
South-East Asia Campaigner
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley CA 94703 USA
Tel: + 1 510 848 1155 (ext. 312), Fax: + 1 510 848 1008
Email: aviva@irn.org, Web: http://www.irn.org
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