Water is released at the reservoir of the A Vuong hydro power plant

A hydroelectric plant in the central province of Quang Nam released water without warning, making it impossible for the province to take timely measures against flooding, a senior official said on Friday.

Tran Quang Hoai, who led an inspection into the incident as ordered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Department, sand further inspections and consultations with experts were needed before final conclusions were reported to the government.

Reporting to the inspectorate at a meeting on the same day with A Vuong Hydroelectric Joint-stock Company (AVC) which manages the plant, Pham Minh Tuan of the provincial storm and flood control team said as per regulations, AVC had to inform the province of its water release six hours in advance so that it could evacuate residents from low lying areas downstream the Vu Gia River.

“But the company failed to do so,” Tuan said.

AVC, in fact, informed the provincial authorities of its move at 12 p.m. on September 29 when Ketsana was hanging over Quang Nam and started discharging water at 1 p.m. at 1,000 cubic meters per second.

Three hours later it increased the flow to nearly 3,000 cubic meters per second, bringing the total discharge to over 149 cubic meters on October 1.

Nguyen Thanh Quang, vice director of Quang Nam Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, also blamed AVC, saying the discharge of nearly 150 million cubic meters of water while downstream water levels were increasing submerged many villages in Dai Loc District.

The floods then, in fact, rose higher than those of previous years by nearly 1.5 meters, he added.

“Of course A Vuong plant couldn’t cause great floods all by itself, but its water release at a ‘sensitive point of time’ was just like the last straw,” he told the meeting following the preliminary inspection.

“Water from A Vuong gushing out in great force put the whole lowlands of Vu Gia and Thu Bon rivers under water, trapping thousands of local people,” Quang added.

It is estimated that Dai Loc District suffered over VND600 billion (US$33.7 million) of the VND3.5 trillion ($196.63 million) – in losses inflicted on Quang Nam by the ninth storm to hit the East Sea this year.

If AVC had released water on September 28 before the floods came, its reservoir would have had space to store about 60 million cubic meters to contain the floods, Quang Nam’s storm and flood control team said.

“AVC paid attention only to its power generation efficiency and the safety of its work. It did not care about floods in the lowlands, which is the most basic shortcoming.”

Not responsible

On the other hand, AVC Board Chairman Nguyen Van Le said it was wrong to accuse their water release for heavily flooding Vu Gia River’s lowland areas.

It is estimated that A Vuong reservoir’s basin receives 1.23 billion cubic meters of water on average a year, accounting for some 14.4 percent of the Vu Gia River’s basin, Le said, citing statistics compiled by the agriculture ministry’s Institute of Water Sources Planning.

Based on this, the reservoir’s overflow must have accounted for 7.15 percent of that of Vu Gia on September 29 and 9.65 percent the next day, according to Le, concluding that A Vuong’s water discharge in fact made up only one-twentieth of the river’s water amount then.

Le even said A Vuong reservoir helped lessen floods in the lowlands by storing another 146.1 million cubic meters of water.

“Under the procedure approved by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, A Vuong helped cut down last floods by 832 percent,” he said.

However, Quang didn’t agree, saying the figures given by AVC were not correct.

Source: Thanh Nien, Tuoi Tre