Koh Samui's chronic water shortage

Text story includes a video. Doesn't sound like a seasonal problem, but something that will get worse as El Nino bites next year. 5-star hotels may be able to buy groundwater from private extraction companies (for now), but prices go up and that leaves smaller businesses short of water. Imagine getting a massage and being told there is no shower!

Direct link to video

Koh Samui gets an average of 1,960 mm (72 inches) of rainfall annually. That's almost 500 mm more than Bangkok. If the monsoon has been hitting Koh Samui with the same regularity as Bangkok, I fail to understand how its three reservoirs have not been pretty much replenished. After all, the number of hotel rooms in operation in 2020, 2021 and most of 2022 fell from between 25,000-30,000 to just 5,000. The Bangkok Post reports that Pru Namuang reservoir is down to 18,000 cubic meters whereas its capacity is 1.3 cubic meters. With all the water saved since 2020, how is that reservoir so empty? Where did the water go?

It seems to me that the basic water infrastructure can not have been updated for many years and water management so poor to the extent that much of the existing water supply is just being lost as a result of poor or non-existent maintenance.

But the shortage will not last long. What the article fails to point out is that a pipeline from the mainland is 70% complete and should be operational by February 2024. That is expected bring to the end the island's water woes whereafter @numazu should be able to enjoy long showers after his massages 

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1099148/water-rationing-on-koh-samui-as-reservoirs-dry-up

I suspect it's a corruption practice , the ones who are willing to buy privately on high costs receive water all the rest remain with nothing. 

12 hours ago, Boy69 said:

I suspect it's a corruption practice , the ones who are willing to buy privately on high costs receive water all the rest remain with nothing. 

Probably true. But it still does not explain why after nearly three years with around 20% or thereabouts of visitors, the reservoirs are not pretty much full to the brim. Unless they are only large enough to hold supply for one high season. In which case the authorities should have got round to building more as the island was continually attracting more and more tourists and stop moaning about water shortage!

On 9/30/2023 at 9:37 PM, PeterRS said:

Probably true. But it still does not explain why after nearly three years with around 20% or thereabouts of visitors, the reservoirs are not pretty much full to the brim. Unless they are only large enough to hold supply for one high season. In which case the authorities should have got round to building more as the island was continually attracting more and more tourists and stop moaning about water shortage!

I have friends in Cape Town and Johannesburg that have similar water supple problems. It is driven by 3 factors: 1) less rain in south africa in general 2) much larger demand due to increasing middle class 3) lack of investment in infrastructure.  These are solvable problems if you make the effort. 

8 hours ago, KeepItReal said:

I have friends in Cape Town and Johannesburg that have similar water supple problems. It is driven by 3 factors: 1) less rain in south africa in general 2) much larger demand due to increasing middle class 3) lack of investment in infrastructure.  These are solvable problems if you make the effort. 

I experienced the same in Hong Kong in the autumn of 1980. An ageing water infrastructure and the continuing influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from mainland China had put a strain on almost everything from housing, schools - and water supply. So we ended up with water rationing for several weeks. The situation was quite quickly resolved with agreement between Hong Kong and China for a major pipeline to feed water in from Guangdong Province.

Two years later when Margaret Thatcher was in Beijing trying to bully the Chinese into letting the UK continue to run Hong Kong after 1997, her main foreign office advisor Sir Percy Craddock had a private word with her to point out that all China needed to do was turn off the water supply if she did not change her stance. "Nonsense!" it is said she replied. If the Chinese took that action, she would convert a fleet of oil tankers into water tankers and dock them in the harbour. It was an early indication that she herself had a determination about Hong Kong's future that she believed would prevail. She reckoned without wily old Deng Xiao-ping who also had a determination - and he was never going to give in. The treaty signed in 1898 between the two powers was rock solid. Hong Kong would be returned to China.