Satellite Exploration of Thailand

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Lost Rivers - Kanchanaburi

Overview of western Kanchanaburi and Burma

Si Nakharin Reservoir and Dam. Near the lower-right corner is the smaller Tha Thung Na Dam.

Khao Laem Reservoir and Dam

I was browsing through Landsat images from 1973 when, to my surprise, I noticed that two large reservoirs in Kanchanaburi were missing. These reservoirs, and corresponding dams, must have been constructed since that time. Zooming in to 1:1 scale, I could clearly see the rivers - Kwae Yai and Kwae Noi - which now form Si Nakharin Reservoir and Khao Laem Reservoir.

I matched the 1973 images with those of today (1999-2000) and the resulting visual effect was stunning. It looked as though these rivers were buried underneath the reservoirs. In a sense, these reservoirs are still the same rivers - merely widened and deepened - but their geographical characteristics and ecological significance have been transformed for good (and for evil).

Underneath the Reservoirs

The rivers are not the only thing buried underneath the reservoirs. There were villages, wildlife habitats, unexcavated archeological sites, etc., etc.

Construction of Si Nakharin Dam forced 960 families to be resettled on the eastern bank of the reservoir. Their fertile farmland along the river was compensated with rugged plots on the hill. The Resettlement Site Selection Committee had earlier proposed that the area just downstream from Si Nakharin Dam was optimal for land cultivation, but the Forestry Department objected to it, as the area was a forest reserve. The EGAT provided electricity power line from Si Nakharin Dam to the resettlement sites, but not all households could readily afford this modern amenity for which their lives had been sacrificed as the EGAT charged 3000B for the connection fee.

The resettlement scheme for Khao Laem Dam was more complicated as many of the affected villagers were Karen and Mon who didn't possess Thai ID cards. They had little other choice but to submit to whatever the Government promised to offer. Thai villagers - mostly immigrants themselves from north Thailand, could afford to voice their discontent. They received a somewhat better share of resettlement plots than non-Thais. The number of families to be resettled was initially estimated at 1687, but this number swelled to well over 2000 as the actual evacuation went into force.

Quote: Living in hope

"It all began with the building of the Khao Laem dam which drowned our home villages," Didi's assistant, Weerawan Polthip, recalls bitterly. Before the dam, she said, the Karen communities were closely tied by kinship and blessed with rich nature. "We never went hungry as there was plenty of food from our farms and forests. The streams were full of fish. If we had problems, we always have relatives to help out. Now no more."

The Khao Laem dam drowned their valley homes and ancestral farms in the mid 1980s. Some people got meager compensation, others got none at all. Everyone had to move up the rugged hills where their soil was poor and rocky. This was the ground on which they had to build a new life.

"Many people could not wait for the trees to grow, they sold their land to investors from the towns, and the able-bodied left to work outside the villages. Families can no longer live together," Ms Weerawan said.

With the breakdown of social control, Ms Weerawan said, there began the phenomenon of young men leaving their wives and children at a whim. The young mothers, with no family kinship to support them as might have existed in the past, were often forced to leave home to work too. Many became prostitutes, some became infected with the Aids virus.

The result is a rising number of Aids patients and orphans in the village. Meanwhile, poor medical care means malaria continues to be the main killer in the area, with orphans left to struggle in a culturally disintegrated community with few social support networks.

"These children would have had relatives to care for them before our home village was drowned," says Ms Weerawan.

Quote: Watershed Vol.6 No.1 July - October 2000: Marginalising the Local

Of the 1,949 families that were forced to move to the resettlement site, 20 per cent had moved again by 1989. As many as one in five of the ethnic minority Karen villagers living in the 388 square kilometre reservoir area before the dam was built had no legal residence papers and were therefore ineligible for houses at the resettlement site. The World Bank thus ignored them. According to a study produced by the World Bank's Operations Evaluations Department in 1993, 80 per cent of people evicted by the dam "were...dissatisfied with the resettlement outcome", considering themselves "to be worse off than before resettlement". The area between the nearby town of Kanchanburi and the dam was forested before access roads to the dam were built. Since the dam was completed, forest has been cleared for golf courses, tourist resorts, commercial agriculture, plantations, transmission lines and more roads.

Panya Kwanprasertwaree, a Karen elder who was forced to move because of the dam, told Watershed magazine, "We had to spend all of our compensation for living, and it wasn't enough, actually. The water supply that they talked about never happened...The condition of the land here and my previous land is very different...I miss the fertile resources. Everything was fertile. I could find things for a meal. The thing that I miss most is rice. Rice is my soul. Our ancestors did rice farming for ages. But now I cannot grow rice and have to buy it, which is also very expensive ... If I could ask the officials for one thing, I would like to ask, 'Please can I return to where I was?'"

Quote: Beyond the Kwai

March to May water level is low, you can see submerged towns and villages.

The tour began in the morning with a three-hour ride from the provincial centre to Rantee Bridge at Khao Laem hydroelectric dam.

From there we took a boat to tour sites unlike any other I have seen before. We reached Samprasob, the point where Songalia, Rantee and Beeklee rivers meet.

The confluence of the three rivers had led to the creation of a huge artificial reservoir following the construction of Khao Lam dam in 1983.

We proceeded to visit what is left of the original bridge built during the Second World War to link Thailand with Burma.

You can only see the remains of the original bridge if the water level in the reservoir is low during the summer season. From there we proceeded on the most unsual leg of our journey to Sangkhla Buri, a district bordering Burma that is blessed with some of the most spectacular views of mountains, forests and natural landscape in the country, and a settlement of ethnic Mons and Karens that lies submerged in water following the construction of Khao Lam Dam.

We reached Muang Badaan, the local name for the submerged settlement. During March to May when the water level is low you can see old houses, temples and a hospital, or whatever is left of them today, that belonged to ethnic Mon and Karen hilltribesmen who once lived there, but were forced to move to higher ground after the government decided to build the dam.

Watching this lost settlement, a monument to once thriving Mon and Karen cultures on the Thai-Burmese border, can leave a bad taste, but nonetheless, the view of the gigantic reservoir with boats and rafts plying the lake make for a stunning spectacle.

"It gives me a sad feeling watching the lost villages and temples,"said Poo, a local resident.

One historical curiosity buried underneath is the old tract of the Thailand-Burma railway. The Burmese Inn website provides a curious map on this issue, though its scope is limited to Sangkhlaburi and its vicinity [ image link ]. Along the railroad tract were cemeteries for the deseased during its construction. The recently completed "Border Peace Temple" at the Three Pagodas Pass is reportedly commemorating war victims whose cemeteries were submerged under the reservoir.

Nam Chon Dam Project

Many maps of Thailand show yet another large reservoir in the north of Si Nakharin Reservoir and Khao Laem Reservoir. This reservoir doesn't exist, as the Government shelved its plan to construct this Nam Chon (alt. Choan) Dam in 1988 due to strong protests from various social groups. In the context of political history of Thailand, the Nam Chon Dam case is regarded as a cornerstone where the civil society reasserted its strength after years of submission since the 1976 right-wing crackdown. The bone of contention, however, wasn't so much about human rights of the resettled but, rather, the ecological damage to Thungyai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary which was emerging as a national pride for Thailand. Those who opposed to the construction of Nam Chon Dam were also likely to oppose to the historical occupation of the wildlife sanctuary by Karen villagers.

There were also conflicts of interestest within Government agencies. The gain for the EGAT was a loss for the Forestry Department. The EGAT repeatedly claimed that Thungyai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary was already degraded, that it might as well build the dam and take advantage of the electricity while protecting what remained of the forest, and that the EGAT could be a more effective guardian of forests than the Forestry Department (!). There's little doubt that the discord among Government agencies was one factor which lead to the shelving of the dam construction plan.

Quote: Thailand's Nam Choan Dam Project: A Case Study in the 'Greening' of South-East Asia

In a country where there are immense pressure to promote 'development' (in the economic sense of the term), these tangible benefits are seen, by the proponents of such projects, to speak for themselves and to need little further justification. Critics state, however, that dam building agencies and their supporters in Thailand not only occasionally doctor or withhold information, but also try to restrict the debate. The resulting assessments are rarely comprehensive in terms of the range of costs and benefits that are analysed. In particular, questions of equity, the value that should be assigned to the natural environment, and the disruption to local communities, are all ignored. Opponents maintain that when costs such as these are incorporated in to the analysis, then the balance of the argument alters fundamentally: 'If water schemes were only built where they satisfied the above recommendations - if, in other words, dams were only built when they could be certain to provide water on a sustainable basis and without incurring intolerable social and economic costs - then very few, if any, would be built'.

Summary of Hydro-Electric Dams in Kanchanaburi

Quote: Existing Rules for Operation of Srinagarind and Khao Laem Reservoirs and their Effects on Water Management of Mae Klong Irrigation System

Dam		Srinagarind	Tha Thung Na	Khao Laem
Type of Dam		Storage	Regulating	Storage
Year of Completion		1980	1982	1984
Storage Capacity (mcm.)	Total	17,745	54.8	8,860
Storage Capacity (mcm.)	Effective	7,470	28.8	5,848
Water Level (m,MSL)	Normal	180.0	59.7	155.0
Water Level (m,MSL)	Minimum	159	55.5	135.0
Annual Inflow (mcm/yr)		4,457	-	5,161
Electricity Generating Capacity (MW)		720	38	300
Generated Electricity (million kw-hr/yr)		1,185	165	460

Mae Klong river has the total basin area of 30,106 square kilometers. It consists of 2 main tributaries namely Khwae Yai and Khwae Noi. In 1963, Mae Klong River Basin Development Plan was formulated. The plan is divided into 4 stages:

Stage I: Construction of Vajiralongkorn Diversion Dam and distribution system over the area of 1,000,000 rai on the lower left bank of Mae Klong during 1964-1975

Stage II: Construction of Srinagarind Storage Dam and Tha Thung Na Regulating Dam on Khwae Yai and distribution system on the upper left bank and the right bank of Mae Klong over the area of 1,600,000 rai during 1970-1989. However, the construction of distribution system on some part of the upper left bank is delayed and continued in stage III

Stage III: Construction of Khao Laem Storage Dam on Khwae Noi during 1979-1984. Bang Laen irrigation project on the upper left bank which could not be completed in stage II, are continued in this stage. It is planned that the construction of Banglane project be completed by year 2,000

Stage IV: Construction of Nam Choan Storage Dam on the Upper Khwae Yai. The study for this plan was started in 1970. However the plan was suspended because of the objection on environmental impact of the dam.

Si Nakharin Dam H: 140m / W: 610m	Tha Thung Na Dam H: 30m / W: 840m	Khao Laem Dam H: 92m / W: 1019m	Nam Chon Dam H: 185m / W: 400m

Appendix

**Large Scale Hydro-Electric Dam Projects in Thailand**
Name of the Dam	Location	River	Completion
Bhumiphol	Tak	Ping	1964
Nam Phung	Sakon Nakorn	Phung	1965
Ubon Ratana	Khon Kaen	Phong	1966
Sirinthon	Ubon Ratchathani	Dom Noi	1970
Nam Phrom	Chaiyaphum	Phrom	1973
Sirikit	Uttaradit	Nan	1974
Si Nakharin	Kanchanaburi	Kwae Yai	1980
Bang Lang	Yala	Pattani	1982
Tha Thung Na	Kanchanaburi	Kwae Yai	1982
Khao Laem	Kanchanaburi	Kwae Noi	1984

Bibliography (available at the Central Library of Chulalongkorn University)

Resettlement of Population Following the Dam Consruction: The Case of Srinagarind Dam, Thailand
1981, Manat Suwan, 209 pages

Report on a Socio-economic Study of the Villages in the Proposed Reservoir Area of Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand's Project (Khao Laem Dam)
1979, Chulalongkorn Univbersity Social Research Institute, 153 pages

Series / Nam Choan Inquiry
1988, Nation, 27 pages

Image Processing

I adopted the 1973 images from a single Landsat frame. As for the 1999-2000 images, I had to compose a mosaic from three Landsat frames except for the image around Si Nakharin, which was adopted from a single frame.

Base Images

	Path	Row	WRS	Sensor	RGB	Date
Image-1	140	50	1	MSS	231	Jan 26, 1973
Image-2	131	49	2	ETM+	732	Feb 02, 2000
Image-3	131	50	2	ETM+	732	Feb 02, 2000
Image-4	130	50	2	ETM+	732	Dec 25, 1999

I chose the color combination RGB=732 (rather than 742) for ETM+ images to allow higher contrast for roads and cities.

Making of a mosaic (Image-2, Image-3, Image-4)
Image-2 and Image-3 are sequential frames from the same Landsat mission, and they can be stitched pixel-to-pixel. Their color balances somewhat differ, though. Image-4 is from another mission and, due to the peripheral aberration, difficult to stitch to Mosaic-2-3 with high precision. I did not perform color matching, but "stretched contrast (graphic editor: GIMP)."

For the 1999-2000 overview picture of Kanchanaburi and Burma, I composed a mosaic from 1/8 frames (RBG=742) and performed color matching.

The Thai-Burmese border demarcation line was adopted and overlayed from the CD map "SmartMap / Thailand."

Matching of Image-1 and Mosaic-2-3-4

Image-1	1. I magnified its height by 3220/3200 (= 1.006250). 2. I rotated the image 8.86^o clockwise.
Mosaic-2-3-4	1. I magnified the image (both width and height) by 750/1420 (= 0.528169)

Due to peripheral aberration, the matching process was difficult and its outcome unsatisfactory.

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