The rocky road ahead

Recent reports on the Mekong channel improvement and so-called “rock blasting” are inaccurate and misleading.

Even the presence of a few Chinese vessels surveying the area between Chiang Saen and Chiang Khong were enough to raise alarm and stir the population and local environmentalists into thinking that the Chinese will soon come to destroy the entire Mekong by rock blasting reefs and rapids and dredging shoals under their MekongLancang navigation improvement programme.

No one doubts that using dynamite for river work and rock clearance is an environmental issue.

But it is the price we need to pay for a better future and to have environmentally friendly waterway transport as opposed to congested road transport.

It is the developer’s responsibility indeed to design navigation channels that cause the minimum damage to the environment and aquatic life.

And such responsibility starts with a detailed survey, which is now going on.

No one benefits from a ruined river for the sake of destruction.

Those who are designing the channel are trying to find the best solution in a difficult river stretch where scattered rock outcrops and submerged obstacles challenge navigation.

The developer has no reason to destroy everything outside the channel boundaries but is creating a new space by clearing that which is constraining the flow of water to the river. This is necessary to keep water levels upstream and downstream similar. A FORMER WATERWAY EXPERT OF THE MRC