According to the seasonal schedule for coffee care, by now the second irrigation should already have been completed to nourish the blossoms. Yet more than 70 hectares of coffee belonging to hundreds of households in Hà Mòn commune, Đăk Hà district, have not even received their first watering. Many families here feel as if they are “sitting on fire,” watching their coffee trees wither under the scorching sun and dry winds of the Central Highlands dry season.
Ngô Văn Doanh, head of Hải Nguyên hamlet in Hà Mòn commune, explained: “Our hamlet lies at the tail end of the irrigation canal, so every year we water later than others, but we have never faced a situation this dire. It’s already been nearly half a month since Tết, yet many coffee plots still haven’t received their first watering. Normally by this time in previous years we would be on the second round. The coffee trees are drying out under the harsh sun and wind. For nearly a month, hundreds of villagers have been waiting day and night for the water, but it still hasn’t come.”
Nguyễn Kế Trường, Chairman of the Hà Mòn People’s Committee, said that according to the Đăk Hà Irrigation Station’s schedule, the commune was supposed to start receiving irrigation water from December 16, 2013. Hundreds of households had already laid pipes, set up pumps, and stayed awake through the nights waiting for the flow. Yet even by the 28th day of the lunar year—just before Tết—no water had arrived. As the holiday approached, many families lost patience, dismantled their pumps to go home for the New Year, only for water to finally appear after they left. Some stayed behind, sacrificing their holiday to secure water for their coffee, but after just two days the supply ran dry again.
Without adequate irrigation, 72 hectares of coffee owned by hundreds of households now face not only the loss of the current crop but also long-term damage to plant growth and productivity. Some families, desperate to save their withering trees, tried connecting pumps to draw water from the distant Plây Krông hydropower reservoir. But the fields are far away and uphill, making the effort costly in labor, fuel, and money, while the amount of water gained was negligible.
Đăk Hà district currently has more than 7,000 hectares of coffee, most of it dependent on water from the Mùa Xuân dam. Locals report that the dam itself has no shortage of water; the real problem is a broken vacuum valve in the siphon pipe that feeds water into the N10 canal. This fault has existed since the 2012–2013 dry season but has not been repaired by the irrigation authorities.
Facing the risk of hundreds of hectares of coffee dying from drought, the Đăk Hà Irrigation Station is now rushing to fix the siphon valve. However, Dương Nga Văn, head of planning at Đăk Uy Coffee Company, warned that if water does not reach the fields within three or four days, the entire 72 hectares could dry up completely. Even if water arrives in time to save the trees, the 2014 coffee harvest will certainly suffer severe losses because many branches have already dried out.
Hundreds of households here now face the prospect of losing their crop and hundreds of millions of đồng in income—an outcome many blame on the negligence of the irrigation management. Villagers in Hải Nguyên hamlet note that when irrigation fees were still collected in the past, water shortages never occurred. Now, with irrigation fees waived under the state policy, they complain of a “common property, nobody cares” situation that has left their livelihoods at risk.