The river bed is dry and cracked on parts of the Red River photographed Thursday afternoon in Hanoi.

North Vietnam is facing draught in large areas as rivers and lakes are drying out, a senior irrigation official said Thursday.

Binh cited climate and hydrometeorology experts from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment as warning that that the El-Nino effect on the north and central regions may be worst this time.

Water levels in rivers in the north have dropped to record lows over the last decade and are much lower than at the same time last year, he said.

Officials have warned that water levels in the region may drop to around 30 percent lower than the previous years’ average. The Irrigation Department said two major rivers of the region, Red River and Thai Binh River, may lack 40-50 percent of water during the dry time from February to April next year.

Water levels on the Red River this year has kept falling; from 4 meters in September to 1.3 Thursday morning, around 1-2 meters below the average of past several years.

Officials from the department anticipated the level will drop to a record 0.8 meters in February. “One will be able to walk across the river,” the department said in a report.

The level upstream was reported to reach 76 meters on Wednesday, 1.96 meters lower than last month.

Lakes have been parched as well. At the end of November, only two of 17 lakes in the region, Pa Khoang in Dien Bien Province and Nui Coc in Thai Nguyen Province, stored enough water for irrigation purposes. Others had less than 80 percent of their capacities - Dong Mo in Hanoi was at 34 percent, Yen Lap and Trang Vinh in Quang Ninh at 54-57 percent, and Yen My in Thanh Hoa at 75 percent.

The reservoir at the Thac Ba hydropower plant is 1.1 billion cubic meters short while Tuyen Quang Dam is 900 million cubic meters short, and the Hoa Binh Dam, 600 million cubic meters.

Binh said the rainfall this year was only around 80 percent of the average and the rainy season had ended a month earlier than in previous years.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has asked local authorities and lake management units to have waterways dredged and to clear objects or constructions that block the water flow to cultivated areas.

The ministry’s Cultivation Department has suggested that northern farmers cultivating rice on 30,000 hectares at higher altitudes plant other crops that need less water for the coming winter-spring crop, the department head Nguyen Tri Ngoc said.

Binh said the ministry will meet with the Electricity of Vietnam and the National Hydrometeorology Forecast Center to discuss increasing water discharge from hydropower plant dams for irrigation purposes.

Source: Tuoi Tre