Bangkok: Campaigners heaped criticism Tuesday on a billion-dollar hydro-electric dam plan for Laos at a public meeting here that has put the tiny communist nation under intense global scrutiny after 30 years of near isolation.

A World Bank consultation tour designed to win over opponents of the 1,070-Megawatt project made its first stop in Thailand, which has already signed a five-billion-dollar contract to buy electricity produced by the Nam Theun 2 (NT2) dam for 25 years.

But activists slammed the 1.3-billion-dollar dam scheme and claimed another World Bank-backed hydro-project had wrought environmental disaster in northeastern Thailand.

“Don’t let this be a repetition of the Pak Moon dam,” said a Thai man who identified himself as Sompong.

He said that Thai dam project had devastated a thriving fishing industry and left thousands of families without support.

Experts among the 150 people at the meeting warned of the social impact in resettling the 5,700 people forced to leave their homes to make their way for the dam, intended to start generating electricity from 2009.

They also said a key habitat for hundreds of Asian elephants and other endangered species would be destroyed.

The power plant project on Nam Theun, a tributary of the Mekong river which cuts across much of Indochina, has been on the drawing board for 30 years but gained interest among investors only over the last decade.

The World Bank has said the roads how discussions would provide feedback to determine the fate of the project.

The tour moves from Bangkok to Tokyo, Paris and Washington before ending September 24 in the Lao capital Vientiane, where local groups could get a rare opportunity to quiz their rulers on wider political and economic issues centering around the project.

The government sees the dam as an essential part of its plans to alleviate poverty and a significant contributor to the landlocked agrarian state’s economic growth, its top official at the workshop said.

“My government is committed to balancing development with preservation,” said permanent secretary Somboune Manolom of the Lao ministry of industry.

He acknowledged the potential for graft in the project was “very much a concern” in the secretive state.

“We have to ensure that a significant part of NT2 revenue will be used for poverty eradication and environmental protection,” he said.

The cash-starved Lao government is bent on seeing the venture implemented as it could generate revenue of nearly two billion dollars – the current Gross Domestic Product value of Laos – over a 25-year period.

The developer of the project is international consortium Nam Theun 2 Power Company Ltd (NTPC), where EDFI, the global arm of French state-owned Electricite de France (EDF), holds a 35 percent key stake.

The Lao government and Thailand’s Electricity Generating Public Co. Ltd. hold a 25 percent stake each while another 15 percent equity comes from joint venture Italian-Thai Development Public Co. Ltd.

EDF’s Jean-Pierre Serusclat, who is chairman of NTPC, said learning from past mistakes on hydro-power projects was vital. “We have to be humble in dealing with the human stuff,” he said.

Serusclat said the public consultations were vital for the dam process despite the negative reaction by several campaigners and green groups. “By opening the doors, obviously we are getting more criticism and input from civil society,” he said.