Tens of thousands of hectares of rice- growing fields in this area are forecast at a risk of lack of irrigation water or forced to switch to an alternative crop.
The National Hydrology Meteorology Forecast Center forecasted that the ENSO phenomenon would become warm- phase neutral condition askew during the first half of 2020, lasting in the next months of the second half of the year.
The rainfall will identify low level heading through April 2020, triggering the high risk of water shortage at reservoirs and dry, drought conditions across the country on the large scale.
In particular, there are a total of 156 reservoirs containing about 40-60 percent of water as its designed capacity in Binh Dinh province, causing many difficulties for agricultural production in the winter-spring crop of 2020.
In Binh Dinh province, around 13,000 households have been facing severe shortage of water in the dry season.
With the current natural disaster, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Binh Dinh province had an urgent meeting and proposed measures to fight drought, thereby calling on localities, functional agencies and people to apply traditional and scientific measures for reasonable water usage in the winter-spring crop of 2019-2020.
Besides that, the department put forward long- term measures of anti-drought, focusing on investment and upgrading with a purpose of effectively exploiting water supply works for drought-hit-people.
According to Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Thua Thien - Hue Province Ho Sy Nguyen, Ta Trach Irrigation Reservoir, which is one of the largest irrigation works in Central Vietnam, holds only 75.3 percent of water capacity while hydropower plants of Huong Dien and Binh Dien respectively 53.7 percent and 25 percent of water below-average of more than 20 meters over the normal water level.
In the first three months of 2020, the rainfall is expected to be less than 30 percent over an average percentage of usual years when the summer heat wave will begin.
Yesterday, Chairman of the People’s Committee of Thua Thien- Hue Province presided an urgent meeting with leaders of departments, agencies and authorities to discuss on anti-drought plans because the locality must begin inter-reservoir operation for the first time during the dry season of 2020.
