VietNamNet
Bridge – The forests have been
devastated, the El Nino rages through the land, water streams have been forced
to change direction to give place to hydropower plants. All these have made the
underground water depleted and coffee plants wither.
While
the underground water gets depleted, the surface water on rivers, lakes and
streams has also decreased, which both have made the dry season in the Central
Highlands more severe. Pham Vu Tuan, Head of the Meteorology and Hydrology in
the Central highlands, has predicted that this would be a difficult dry season
for coffee growers, because of the low average rainfall in 2011.
Farmers,
warned about the water supply shortage, have been on tenterhooks. Watering
coffee plants is now their biggest concern. In Gia Lai, Dak Lak and Dak Nong
provinces, farmers all are rushing to buy pipes and pumps to be ready to water
coffee plants.
Tran
Thanh Son, a farmer in A Yun Commune of Chu Se district in Gia Lai province,
said that he had to spend 30 million dong to dig a well, but has not found the
course of a stream. Son said that other farmers have dug the wells with the
dept of hundreds of meters, but the water is limited.
In
general, coffee growers need to water coffee plants three or four times in
every crop. If the drought continues, there will be no water to irrigate the
plants.
Dr Ngo
Tuan Tu, Deputy Head of the water resource programming and survey federation in
the central region and Central Highlands, said that the underground water
resources in many parts of the central coastal provinces have been decreasing
in both quality and quantity. In many places, the underground water has
decreased by 20-30 percent, while the underground water level has dropped by
3-4 meters.
Tu said
that the underground water in the coastal areas of the central region is more
limited than other areas, which only exists on small aquifers of the narrow
coastal plain and the riverside valleys.
In
Quang Ngai and Ninh Thuan provinces, farmers have overexploited the underground
water to hatch shrimp, and then discharge waste water, making the aquifers
dirty. The titanium exploitation in Binh Dinh and Bnh Thuan has also been badly
affecting the underground water quality. The underground water has been serving
the exploitation operation, thus causing salinization.
In the
Central Highlands, as the coffee growing areas have been increasing too
rapidly, farmers have been suffering. As there is no rain in the dry season
which lasts six months, farmers have to dig wells to get water to irrigate
coffee plants. This has resulted to the decrease of 3-4 meters of the
underground water level. In Bao Loc town, some wells have become depleted which
cannot provide water for irrigation any more.
Besides,
the environment has been seriously damaged due to the loss of the preventive
forests. The rivers in the central region are too short, sloping, while there
are too many hydropower plant dams. Therefore, the volume of water to the lower
course is limited, which certainly influence the underground water current.
In
order to save costs, farmers have to use electricity run pumps instead of
diesel run pumps. However, this only can be applied for some coffee growing
areas, while the coffee areas far from residential quarters still need to be
pumped with diesel run machines. Meanwhile, the national electricity grid still
cannot reach out to all localities.
As
such, the serious decrease of the underground water is making the coffee
production more costly, which means lower profits for farmers. It costs about
60 million dong to water and take care for one hectare of coffee.
Source:
SGTT
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