Regional Outlook : Is Asia Robbing Rural Poor to Power the Rich? : Vietnam’s Hoa Binh dam displaced 50,000 and wrecked forests. Critics ask whether hydroelectric energy is worth it.

As recently as two years ago, the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi suffered the daily ignominy of crippling power shortages that hobbled industry and left residents to sit in the dark most nights of the week.

The power outages are now just a distant memory, thanks to a massive $1-billion project in Hoa Binh--a two-hour drive southwest of the capital--that was built by an army of 30,000 workers guided by 1,000 experts from the old Soviet Union.

The 40-story-high Hoa Binh dam is the largest hydroelectric project in Southeast Asia and will put out a healthy 1,900 megawatts of electricity when the work is completed--enough even in energy-hungry Los Angeles to power nearly 2 million homes. The dam is also the largest industrial project ever undertaken in Vietnam, the last showpiece of Soviet aid before the collapse of communism brought an abrupt end to Moscow’s overseas largess.

But in order to power the dam, authorities flooded some of the richest rice land in northern Vietnam to create a 75-square mile reservoir. Upward of 50,000 people were moved from their fertile valley farms to mountain villages and left to fend for themselves.

Today, more than four years after they were moved, the farmers eke out a pathetic living trying to grow cassava and tea on precipitous mountainsides. Many have resorted to eating tree bark or roots--and have caused calamitous deforestation around the lake as a result. Ironically, none of the resettled families has yet to receive any electricity.

“We can’t feed our children anymore,” said Dinh Van Thien, 58, a father of 10 who was once a relatively prosperous rice farmer. “We don’t have a stable life here. We are hungry. We are very hungry.”

Hoa Binh, rather than becoming the symbol of progress that its designers in Moscow once envisaged, has become a cautionary tale debated throughout Asia at a time when many countries in the region are considering investing massively in hydroelectric projects to meet their burgeoning energy needs. For most of these countries, electricity is the life blood fueling booming export-based industrial economies, and their power needs are expanding at a dizzying rate.

Advocates view hydroelectric power as a clean, renewable resource preferable to virtually any other form of electricity generation--better certainly when compared to the pollution of coal-fired plants and the dangers inherent in nuclear power.

But critics maintain that the huge dams involved in hydroelectric energy generation are destroying the last wilderness areas of Asia at a time when trees and arable land are in ever shorter supply. In essence, they say, the dams are robbing the rural poor to provide power to the urban rich.

A coalition of environmental groups and organizations representing rural farmers have managed to attract public attention to their cause in countries such as India and Thailand. It is the first time that such groups are being heard in the developing countries of Asia, which in the past have prized economic growth above all.

In India, opposition forces have mobilized to block the Sardar Sarovar dam, the first of a planned 30 dams being built across the Narmada River at an estimated cost of $9 billion.

In Thailand, a committee of countries along the famed Mekong River is to submit plans this week for the construction of a $2.7 billion hydroelectric project between Laos and Thailand. Plans for the dam, called Pa Mong, have been drastically scaled down to reduce the number of people resettled to about 50,000 from the earlier planned 350,000--a level the designers now admit was “unrealistic.”

“I don’t think these countries can afford to ignore the tremendous generating capacity of the seventh-largest river in the world,” said Charles Lankester, a Canadian and former U.N. official who now heads the Mekong Committee, which is operated by Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. “It’s a huge resource. Once the environmentalists look at some alternative sources, the feasibility of hydro will re-emerge.”

The decision to press ahead with Pa Mong followed a decision by the World Bank in December to go ahead with funding for the Pak Mun dam being built near the Cambodian border by Thailand’s Electricity Generating Authority, using World Bank funding.

Although Pak Mun would involve the resettlement of only about 245 families directly, environmentalists waged a long and bitter campaign to halt the dam. Thai authorities finally agreed to create a committee to monitor the environment as part of the deal, but the United States and Australia still cast rare dissenting votes when the issue was presented last year to the World Bank executive directors.

“The anti-dam movement in Thailand is quite strong,” said Witoon Permpongsacharoen, head of the Bangkok-based Project for Ecology Recovery. “The dams are unacceptable from a broad social and environmental perspective. They always serve the city people who need the electricity.”

Added Chainarong Settachuea, of the Bangkok group Ecological Concern: “We feel that dam building is a form of development that causes destruction. It is development in a wrong way, taking away resources from people of an entire region only to support a minor industrial section.”

In Indonesia, 600 families last year staged a rare protest against the government’s seizure of their lands to build a dam in central Java. “Development requires sacrifice,” President Suharto told the demonstrators, who were demanding increased compensation for their land.

Major hydroelectric projects are also being planned by China, including the world’s third largest dam along the Yalong River for the country’s Sichuan province. Malaysia also has a huge hydroelectric project on the drawing board.

As Thailand’s Witoon remarked, dam building without any opposition is becoming a luxury of authoritarian regimes like those in Vietnam and China, where open dissent is rarely tolerated. But even the Vietnamese government has not entirely escaped public wrath because of the dislocation caused at Hoa Binh.

Apart from desperately needed power generation, the Hoa Binh dam was designed to regulate the flow of water reaching the Red River, to control flooding in the wet season and provide irrigation during the dry months.

But although its major goals were achieved, Nguyen Van Linh, who until last year headed the Communist Party in Vietnam, publicly criticized the country’s electric authorities for the treatment of the largely minority tribesmen who had lived in the area of the reservoir. The poor treatment of the minorities, mainly Dao and Moung, also was the centerpiece of a Hanoi television expose.

“Big social problems were created for the minorities,” said Le Hong Tam, an economist at Hanoi’s National Center for Social Sciences. “The people in the reservoir area have suffered very much.”

One problem was the level of compensation: Determined at 1979 values, the amount of relocation assistance was never adjusted to compensate for hyper-inflation and a major devaluation of the Vietnamese currency. Many farmers ended up with the equivalent of 5 cents for their farms.

In addition, the majority of farmers, who were used to harvesting two crops a year of rice, were never provided with alternate means to earn a living or feed their families. For example, while the reservoir is said to be rich in fish, the farmers were never trained in fishing or given boats and nets to do the job.

Harder still, the farmers faced a difficult transition from the relative bounty of farming a fertile valley to growing crops on the sides of mountains. Some have succeeded better than others, but it remains a daunting job to feed their families, and many are still receiving food handouts.

“The rice we grow here is not enough to feed our family,” said Tran Thi Thi, a 54-year-old widow. “It is much more difficult now than before. We hope that in the future we are given some of the benefits of the dam, like electricity.”

The biggest problem, though, according to authorities, was that the farmers started clearing the land of the trees, to sell or burn the firewood, build houses and make room for their crops.

The lack of trees causes dirt to run off into the reservoir during rainy months, and this in turn has created enormous silting problems. According to one report, the life span of the dam may have been reduced from 200 years to 50 years by the silt problem.

Philip Hirsch, a lecturer at the University of Sydney who has studied the resettlement at Hoa Binh in detail, said the dam was “planned without any environmental impact assessment beforehand. There was a general lack of awareness of the problems that would follow.”

Thai Phung Ne, an adviser to the minister of energy, conceded in an interview that planners had erred in the resettlement program by not building housing and other facilities for the farmers sooner.

But he steadfastly maintained that the decision to proceed with the huge dam was “correct” and said Vietnam is going ahead with plans for a project twice as big as Hoa Binh further north. Western diplomats said they doubt the country will ever find the financing.

Hoa Binh itself is only half completed, with four turbines in place, two ready to be installed and two more on order from a factory in St. Petersburg. Northern Vietnam already has a surplus of electricity, even with only four turbines working, while southern Vietnam still endures daily shortages.

Le Hong Tam, the Hanoi economist, said he wonders whether Vietnam might have been better off by following the American example of the Tennessee Valley Authority in building a series of small dams rather than one massive project with a reservoir so huge that it has even changed the climate of northern Vietnam.

“Downsizing” of the resettlement area has been a key element of the redesigned Pa Mung dam in northern Thailand and Laos.

Conceding that Hoa Binh is “exactly what we shouldn’t be doing,” the Mekong Committee’s Lankester said the Pa Mung project is “loaded with social and environmental mitigating effects.”

“Pa Mung was a high dam, and now it’s a small dam,” Lankester said. “We’ve had to downscale it.” The original plan to resettle 350,000 people “is unimaginable today,” he added.

Laos is so poor that it doesn’t need much electricity. It will sell the power for foreign currency to Thailand, which has one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

The Mekong Committee’s first big project--the Nam Ngum dam in Laos, which was built before the Indochinese war--is a crucial contributor to the Laotian economy, with electricity sales to neighboring Thailand accounting for about 40% of the country’s export earnings.

Environmentalists such as Witoon argue that Thailand should try to reduce electricity consumption rather than build new dams.

“We have no empty land,” Witoon said. “There is no place for displaced farmers to go. We have banned logging because of the shortage of forests, yet they propose flooding thousands of hectares. What sense does this make?”

Phillipe Annez, head of the World Bank’s regional office in Bangkok, believes the issues are not so clear cut. “Compared to other forms of electricity, the environmental impact of a dam is by far not very important,” he said. “Its the closest thing to renewable energy you can get.”

Harnessing the Rivers

HOW HYDROELECTRIC POWER WORKS

* The Goal: To tap into energy created as gravity pulls river water along to the sea. Dams are buil to control this energy flow.

* The Process:

1-Controlled flow of water is funneled through concrete tunnel to turbine.

2-Water turns turbine blades, which are connected to electricity generators.

3-Electricity flows through power lines to users.

4-Draft tube under turbine allows water to escape, creating vacuum that sucks more water in and increases efficiency.

* The dam: A river in full flood can be a good source of power. But rivers are unreliable: During dry seasons, water volume and velocity drop. So, engineers build dams on rivers, creating reservoirs that provide a consistent flow of water to the power stations.

WHERE ASIAN NATIONS GET ENERGY, 1990

Country Petroleum Natural Gas Coal Hydroelectric Nuclear China 16.7 1.9 77.3 4.1 0.0 India 31.7 4.3 54.6 8.6 0.9 Indonesia 64.3 28.1 3.3 4.3 0.0 Malaysia 54.3 34.8 4.3 6.5 0.0 Thailand 69.7 16.4 9.0 4.9 0.0 Vietnam 34.8 0.0 56.5 8.7 0.0 United States 26.2 27.2 33.2 4.3 9.1

NOTE: Figures may not add to 100 due to rounding.

THE WORLD’S LARGEST HYDROELECTRIC PLANTS

Name of Dam Location Rated Capacity (MW) Grand Coulee Washington, U.S. 6,480 Krasnoyarsk Russia 6,096 LaGrande 2 Canada 5,328 Churchill Falls Canada 5,225 Bratsk Russia 4,100 Ust-Ilimsk Russia 3,675 Paulo Afonso Brazil 3,409 Brumley Gap Virginia, U.S. 3,200 Ilha Solteira Brazil 3,200 Hoa Binh Vietnam 1,900

SOURCES: U.S. Energy Information Administration; “How Things Work”

Living With Dams

To developing nations, hydroelectricity seems attractive. But it has drawbacks.

THE PROMISE . . .

Hydroelectric power:

* Does not pollute the atmosphere like coal-fired stations.

* Does not create long-lasting radioactive wastes, like nuclear power.

* Does not use fossil fuels, and so is a renewable resource.

* By creating reservoirs, makes water available for irrigation in dry regions.

. . . AND THE PITFALLS

* Inundation: Dams may flood farmland and tropical rain forests, displacing thousands of people and destroying animal habitats.

* Dam failure: Faulty construction, earthquakes, sabotage or war can make dams collapse, taking a terrible toll.

* Soil depletion: Farmers must use commercial fertilizers when reservoirs trap river sediments--and nutrients--normally deposited on their land.

* Salinization: Salts left behind by evaporation can make river water unusable upon discharge.

* Temperature changes: Temperature of river is lowered in summer and raised in winter, affecting wildlife.

SOURCES: Compiled by Times researcher Kevin Fox from “Environmental Science: A Global Concern,” and “Living in the Environment: An Introduction To Environmental Science,” 5th Edition.