The house seems larger than others in the village of 63 newly-built residences nestled in a shallow valley, but Huong is not happy.

This just isn't home.

Huong, 39, and the others in his village are among an initial 4,000 people recently relocated to make way for construction of the country's largest-ever infrastructure project, the Son La dam and hydroelectric development.

A total of 91,000 people are to be removed from the areas to be flooded by 2010. Most of them are members of ethnic minority groups, including the Thai minority to which Huong belongs.

The government has ordered the relocation of more than 8,600 people from the site of a reservoir by November when the blocking of the Da River is to begin.

"The state arranged for us to come here, it was not our choice," says Huong, the local Communist Party chief.

He spoke during a rare visit by a foreign reporter to the area in Son La province about 100 kilometres (62 miles) east of Dien Bien Phu, where Vietnamese communists defeated French forces about 50 years ago.

Resting mostly on stilts, the wood and bamboo houses are similar to those in the old village, with the ground floors used as storerooms or sheds for cattle and poultry.

They line both sides of a new road that winds its way for miles and miles across the valley.

In distance it is not far to the old village, just about 30 kilometres, but in a culture rooted to the land it might as well be 1,000 kilometres away. The uprooted villagers have left behind their ancestors' graves, an activist in Hanoi said.

The new village, known as Muong Chum, looks cramped.

"We have less than half the amount of land we had in the village where we lived previously," says Huong, one of the few adults in Muong Chum who can speak Vietnamese.

"Our income will go down drastically because the land under cultivation has been reduced," he says.

Mindful that an official from the provincial foreign affairs department is present, he adds: "Everyone wants to have more land but conditions in this district do not permit that, so we have to accept what we have now."

The group, who speak an ancient form of Thai, settled in the region between the 11th and 14th centuries.

An official of the ministry of agriculture and rural development in Hanoi, who asks not to be named, voices disquiet over the mass resettlement.

"They are being forced to leave the habitat and environment that they had been used to for a long time and to give up all of a sudden their old customs and activities," the official says.

"They are being made to sacrifice in the name of national interest."

Vu Duc Thin, deputy general director of the state-run company Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), in Son La, admits that resettlement leads to hardship, saying, "when they have to leave their homeland it would hurt..."

He argues that the people are currently poor and with government help after resettlement, they would be better off.

Nguyen Van Truong, director of the Institute of Ecological Economy in Hanoi, disagrees. He says the new environment is not conducive to development.

"The resettlement of the families removed from their native area is hard work because the new area is mostly on barren or sloping land lacking water," Truong says.

A Vietnamese researcher for an international environment organisation, which is not allowed to operate officially in Vietnam, says that while EVN directly manages the dam project, the relocation has been left to provincial government officials.

The researcher wants an independent assessment of the resettlement and to give the minority ethnic people a say in managing the process.

Initial plans had called for an even larger dam but the size of the structure was scaled down after legislators in Vietnam's usually compliant National Assembly criticised the human and environmental costs of the project.

MPs also questioned the safety of building such a large dam on the Da River in Vietnam's earthquake-prone northern mountains and the potentially devastating flooding impact it could have downstream, particularly on the capital Hanoi, about 300 kilometers southeast.

After acrimonious debate, parliament in June 2001 approved the project in principle but made clear that it was unhappy with the proposed height. The government then reduced it to 215 metres, which would result in 18,000 hectares (45,000 acres) of land being submerged.

Officials see the Son La project as vital to the energy needs of Vietnam, where 60 percent of the power comes from hydroelectricity. Demand for power has risen an average 13 percent to 15 percent annually in the past few years.

By 2010 Vietnam's energy consumption will be 95 billion kilowatt hours, more than double the 46 billion Kwh in 2004, said Lam Du Son, vice president of EVN.

The dam, costing more than 2.6 billion dollars, is expected to begin generating power in 2012. The plant will have a projected capacity of 2,400 megawatts, with full operations planned by 2015.

Vietnam has avoided asking for foreign funding for the project.

A third of the cost stems from equipment purchases. According to EVN's Thin, the power company plans to ask suppliers -- most of them from abroad -- to help raise loans. Most of the rest of the funds are to be raised internally by the company.

Le Thac Can, director of the Vietnam Environment and Sustainable Development Institute in Hanoi, says the dam will bring other benefits.

"Son La reservoir will be very useful for flood prevention in Vietnam and also for the struggle against drought. Last year we had a serious drought and without big reservoirs like Son La, it is going to be difficult for agriculture and for the livelihood of people in the northwest," he said.

As far as the relocated villagers are concerned things are already difficult, and the dam project has made it that way.

Ca Thi Phuong, 23, the local women's leader, worries about the reduced scope for farming in Muong Chum. The villagers prefer to cultivate rice but that is no longer possible.

"We can produce only maize here," Phuong says beneath a hot sun.

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