BANGKOK, Jan 7 — Thailand's Department of Water Resources held a public hearing at the Army Club today to gather public opinion and concerns from residents in eight provinces in the Mekong River Basin about building the Don Sahong dam in Laos.
It was the sixth and last public hearing for the hydropower dam project.
The department will forward the opinions and concerns to the Lao government.
Participants represent people who are about to face the impacts of the dam project.
Krisakorn Silarak, coordinator of the Assembly of the Poor, said that the dam would impact the ecosystems of the Mekong River, its flow, the species of aquatic animals and the lifestyles of people in the basin.
He does not think that engineering techniques can reduce the impacts. He said that fish ladders had not worked at the Pak Mun Dam and theimpacts of the Don Sahong dam would be more than 100 times worse.
Mr Krisakorn wants the project to be scrapped. He said that electricity generated by the dam would not be worth the natural resources that would be damaged.
Fishermen in the eight Mekong River provinces would be in trouble as the dam would block the river and cause a shortage of natural resources.
He urged the Department of Water Resources to convince the Lao government to shelve the project instead of proceeding to build without listening to concerned countries.
Jatuporn Buruspat, director-general of the Department of Water Resources, said that the agency would forward the opinions and concerns to Lao so that it could answer concerned parties or solve problems.
He said that the department continued to monitor project impacts and is trying to protect the public interest in the eight provinces along the Mekong River. (MCOT online news)
