BANGKOK, 29 July 2015 – The government has completed 81% of its urgent projects to drill and restore 891 groundwater wells nationwide. 721 wells are already in use, with 247,763 cubic meters of water being pumped up everyday for agricultural purposes, according to Deputy Director-General of the Groundwater Resources Department, Aranya Fuangswasdi.
Of the wells already in use, 511 are located in fifteen drought-hit provinces in the Chao Phraya River Basin covering the central region and the lower North of Thailand. The wells have helped revive rice plantations threatened by the dry spell, with 214,013 cubic meters of water being pumped up everyday. Ten more wells are still under construction and expected to be finished by the end of the month.
Apart from the new wells, 380 existing groundwater wells are being equipped with turbine pumping machines to improve their storage capacity. Out of that number, 225 already have the pumps installed and have been pumping up 33,750 cubic meters of water per day.
Aranya said the whole maintenance and drilling process is scheduled for completion at the end of July. By then, the water supply for agriculture will have increased to 350,000 cubic meters per day, helping restore 150,000 rai of farmland owned by 4,000 farmer families.
