Sluice gate will stop flooding

Dredging has begun in a section of the Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe Canal where it flows into the Sai Gon River soon after a groud-breaking ceremony in HCM City yesterday. A 58-metre-wide sluice gate is expected to protect more than 600ha of low-lying areas in seven districts. — VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Vu

HCM CITY — Work began yesterday on the construction of a sluice gate on Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe Cannal to help control chronic tidal flood in HCM City.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Hoang Van Thang and deputy chairman of the HCM City People's Committee Nguyen Thanh Tai broke the ground of the VND300 billion (US$15 million) project in Binh Thanh District.

The 58-metre-wide sluice gate is expected to protect more than 600 hectares of low-lying areas in seven districts from flooding during high tide, according to officials.

Nguyen Ngoc Cong, deputy head of the city's Flood Control Centre, said the Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe sluice gate would help reduce flooding in Districts 1, 3, 10, Binh Thanh, Phu Nhuan, Go Vap, and Tan Binh.

It would have a pumping system with a capacity of 48cu.m per second, and was scheduled for completion in December 2012.

Fifty per cent of the 2,095-square-kilometre city was vulnerable to flooding during high tides, Cong said.

The city also plans to spend $550 million to build a 172km-long dyke system along the Sai Gon, Vam Co Dong and Soai Rap rivers to keep out floods. It suffered from record high tides last month, which flooded several residental areas.

Binh Thanh is among the districts worst affected by high tides on the Sai Gon River. —VNS

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Floods slam central coast, claiming another 19 lives

Heavy rains triggered a new round of flooding along the central coast on Sunday. As of Wednesday, the Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control reported 19 dead and six missing in the latest disaster.

Thousands of homes were flooded.

Landslides blocked numerous roads in the region, bringing traffic to a standstill.

Nam Tra My District in Quang Nam Province, for example, has been isolated for five days, because the only entrance was submerged in as much as five meters of water.

As the water levels rose on local rivers, heavy flooding spread to streets throughout the region and saturated streets in Hoi An.

Some 6,500 people were evacuated, and most local schools were closed.

The same situation was reported in Binh Dinh and Phu Yen provinces.

In Quang Ngai Province, a hill in Son Ha District collapsed on Tuesday, burying three houses, killing one child and critically injuring another two. Meanwhile, a crack 150 meters long and 1.2 meters deep was recorded nearby and threatened to widen under heavy rains, local officials said.

Rains continued across the region, but floods were expected to decrease on rivers between Thua Thien – Hue and Phu Yen provinces, the committee said in its latest report.

Since the end of September, floods in the region have killed 186 people, injured another 126 and left 26 missing, according to the committee.

Bui Minh Tang, director of the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting (NCHMF), told Thanh Nien that four disastrous floods have pummeled the region.

“It was forecast that until the end of this year, it’s very likely that central provinces will be hit by another one to two rounds of major flooding,” Tang said.

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Vietnam mulls end to flood-causing power plants

The Ministry of Industry and Trade plans to put an end to small hydropower projects that have serious environmental impacts, an official said Saturday.

There are 86 small hydropower plants with a capacity of less than 30 megawatts and many of them have caused severe flooding, Deputy Minister Hoang Quoc Vuong told a conference in Hanoi.

Vuong said his ministry will ask its energy department to review all small plants and take action to stop inefficient projects.

He has also asked the plants to follow strictly the operating procedures of their reservoirs and to cooperate with local communities and authorities to prevent floods.

Several power plants in the central region, including Ba Ha in Phu Yen Province and A Vuong in Quang Nam Province, have been blamed for worsening flooding and causing huge damages.

Early this month, Phu Yen provincial authorities said the reservoir at Ba Ha Power Plant discharged more water than it was allowed, making it difficult to relocate residents.

But at Saturday’s conference, some experts argued that these plants were not completely responsible for the serious flooding.

They said Ba Ha and A Vuong plants, for instance, became operational around two or three years ago while flooding in the central region has been a serious problem for years. 

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Fresh round of flooding kills 27 in central Vietnam

Another round of flooding triggered by heavy rains over the weekend has killed at least 27 people and left another two missing in the beleagured central region as of Tuesday.

Floods have also injured seven people, damaged nearly 28,000 houses as well as nearly 20,000 hectares of rice, the Central Committee for Floods and Storms Control said in an online report.

They have also brought landslides to main streets like the National Way No.1A in Phu Yen Province and the North-South railway in Khanh Hoa Province, blocking the main transport arteries, local officials told the press.

The Xom Cat Hamlet in Phu Yen Province with more than 200 houses was attacked by a “sand flood” on Monday night.

As of Tuesday morning, the whole hamlet was flooded with sand with some places up to one meter under, said Nguyen Kim Tam, chief of the hamlet, adding that some houses and streets were damaged as well.

According to Tam, the sand came from surrounding casuarina hills and was brought to the hamlet by heavy rains.

This was the first time such an incident took place in the locality, local officials said, urging scientists to pay close attention to it.

Since last month, the central coast has been hit by four rounds of flooding, leaving hundreds of people dead or missing.

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HCM City dyke proposal gets sceptical response

Workers build a concrete dyke in HCM City's Thu Duc District. Engineers propose building a new dyke around the city to prevent flooding during high tides. — VNA/VNS Photo Van Huan

HCM CITY — Engineers with the HCM City Irrigation Association have proposed building a dyke around the city to prevent flooding during high tides, but others have expressed doubts about its feasibility.

At a meeting held in the city on Tuesday to discuss solutions to the flooding problem faced by the city, the engineers proposed that the dyke, with 12 culverts, could be built at the cost of VND11 trillion (US$550 million). After construction, the dyke, together with other water sanitation projects, would prevent flooding in the city, they said.

However, other members of the association said there was no standard for building such a huge project. Dr. Le Phu said that besides natural factors such as rainfall and tides, poor management was also behind of the worsening flooding situation in the city.

Uncontrolled land encroachment near the city's waterways was a problem in the city, he said. The Government has regulated that the city should have a water surface of at least 17 per cent, while HCM City has less than 15 per cent, he said.

Echoing similar concerns, Dr. Pham Van Long warned that if the city does not focus on rectifying the poor management of projects, trillions of dong invested in irrigation or dyke projects will not help.

Pham The Vinh of the Southern Institute for Water Resources Research, said water transportation in the city would be obstructed if this dyke project was implemented. Beside transportation, environmental impacts need to be addressed before a decision is taken, he added. — VNS

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