Experts have blamed deforestation and impractical zoning plans for the construction of reservoirs for the increasing devastation caused by storms and floods.

Workers maintain Ia Tiem reservoir in Chu Se District in the Central Highland province of Gia Lai. Deforestation and impractical zoning plans for the construction of reservoirs are blamed for flood- and storm-caused devastation.

Flooding from two storms in September and October this year inundated nearly the whole region, causing 300 either dead or missing and destroying 100,000 houses, Nien said at the seminar held by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), on preventing and controlling storm and floods in the central region.

Vu Van Tuan, general secretary of the Environment and Water Resources Association, said the devastation scale of storms had increased over the past 10 years and the number of days in a year with heavy and prolonged rains had also increased, leading to heavy floods.

“While the number of deaths from storms has declined, deaths and property damage from by floods have risen,” Tuan said.

Participants said most reservoirs for hydropower plants and irrigation were designed to serve only one particular purpose, with no consideration of keeping floodwater to help reduce floods in lower areas.

When floods occur, the whole volume of floodwater running into the reservoirs is released into rivers, causing floods in lower areas, according to reports at the seminar.

The central and Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) regions have 97 irrigation reservoirs with a total capacity of 2.4 billion cubic metres and 27 hydropower reservoirs with a total capacity of 6.4 billion cubic metres.

Hoang Hoe, deputy chairman of the Viet Nam Forestry Association, said the construction of hydropower plants had destroyed thousands of ha of natural and primitive forests in the region.

“This has caused floods to become more severe,” Hoa said.

The central region is usually hardest hit by storm in Viet Nam, accounting for 65 per cent of the country’s storms and floods, according to the MARD.

The central region needed drastic action to prevent the deforestation of watershed forests, plant new forests and protect existing ones, the seminar heard.

Zoning plans for reservoir projects and projects, which convert natural forests into economic forests, needed to be reviewed, participants said, adding that the region should not implement projects that both take a large area of watershed forests and do not have measures to replant forests that have been destroyed.

Deputy Minister of MARD Dao Xuan Hoc said his ministry had assigned several working teams to evaluate the situation of storms and floods and their causes in central provinces.

Hoc said in principle, the construction of hydropower reservoirs has a positive effect on regulating water flows to lower areas.

However, the last two storms proved the need to fix shortcomings in the zoning plan of the local reservoirs.

Tuan of the Environment and Water Resources Association said the central provinces should draw-up maps of floods and vulnerable areas and complete hydro-meteorological forecasting systems on rivers.

He also proposed to set up a committee for managing big river basins in order to regulate the use of water resources.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News