Mekong Delta braces for dry season with water storage arrangements
People living in the Mekong Delta are installing tanks to store water for the dreaded dry season, and authorities are building artificial lakes.
Pham Van Tien opens the cement tank which has rainwater from the previous night. During the last dry season Tien’s family and some 11,000 others in the delta’s Ben Tre Province suffered from a crippling water shortage.
The six tanks they had to store rainwater were not enough for Tien’s family of four and their two cows. They often had to buy freshwater for VND80,000 ($3.46) for 1,000 liters and use it sparingly so that it lasted three or four days.
Tien, 35, says: “Droughts could come early in future, according to forecasts. So I hired workers to build four more tanks.”
Each cost him around VND1.5 million, or twice as much as plastic ones.
Like Tien, many others in Ben Tre have been preparing for the upcoming dry season by building water tanks and dredging water channels.
Hoang Nam
