"Its so nice to hear good news"

Totally unrelated to the upcoming election of course.

The floating village idea may have to be refloated. Waters have risen since December, driving out the last villagers.


Floodwaters released by Chinese dam in Cambodia forces thousands to flee
Published
2 hours ago
PHNOM PENH (REUTERS) - Floodwaters released by a recently opened Chinese hydroelectric dam in Cambodia has forced hundreds of families from five villages to abandon their homes in recent weeks, the campaign group International Rivers said on Friday (Feb 2).

The villagers in the northern province of Stung Treng have moved to designated project resettlement sites, the group said in a statement that estimated at least 5,000 people would be displaced.

In Srekor village, only 10 families relocated to a resettlement village, while 63 families stayed behind, moving to forested higher ground from where they have witnessed the floodwaters steadily rise since December to reach the roofs of their homes.

"The thriving community of Srekor has become a silent waterworld," International Rivers said, noting that the village's farms, temple, ancestral graves and fishing grounds had been destroyed.

The 400MW Lower Sesan 2 Dam, a joint venture between China's Hydrolancang International Energy Company and Cambodia's Royal Group, finally began operation in November.

Approximately 75m high and 8km long, the dam has taken years to build and is part of China's hydropower ambitions in the Mekong region and is aimed at generating electricity for Cambodia.

Representatives of the joint consortium could not be reached on Friday for comment.

cant figure out if it crosses the main srepok river or it it is on a tributary to that river https://www.google.com.kh/maps/place/Lo ... 106.263722

Back to square one for the Srekor villagers.

Sesan holdouts will not be given public services
5 February 2018
Stung Treng province officials have announced they will not build public facilities for those villagers who refused to relocate to the government’s resettlement site when their villages were flooded late last year by the reservoir of the controversial Lower Sesan II Dam.

Nou Sovannara, director of the provincial Department of Mines and Energy, who attended a meeting on the resettlement on Thursday, said officials will, however, grant the 83 households – from Srekor and Kbal Romeas villages – the forest land they have cleared at the relocation site of their preference.
But authorities will not provide facilities such as schools and health centres at the relocation site where the villagers chose to settle, Sovannara said.

Authorities said they will continue to meet with individual families in an effort to get them to accept the compensation.
However, Fut Kheoun, a Srekor community representative, said since the dam began to operate, officials have not paid them a visit.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/s ... c-services

Back story: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national-p ... power-pain

Against all odds, 258 ethnic Phnong villagers continue their struggle to keep their land and preserve their lifestyle.
Weekend feature article with photos from the Phnom Penh Post:

‘Our pain is like an ocean’
Villagers who refused to relocate for the controversial Sesan II Dam in Stung Treng have seen their homes, schools, pagodas and harvest land flooded. But while they rue their losses, some see a fragile victory
By Phak Seangly and Andrew Nachemson in Stung Treng province
Pictures by Jade Sacker
Friday 16 February 2018

‘Our entire village inundated, but no one leaves there. We were born here, so we agree to die here,” sang Set Nhal, an elderly resident of Kbal Romeas, on the opening evening of the village’s rice festival earlier this week.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national-p ... le-victory

Stung Treng province: Indigenous villagers who have been forced from their land are fighting back, demanding compensation for lost homes and rice fields, flooded as a result of the newly constructed Sesan dam.


(International Rivers Press Release. Photos taken by villagers January 2018)

Sesan holdouts demand compensation from flood
16 March 2018
- Sesan dam holdouts from Kbal Romeas and Srekor villages have gone on the offensive, demanding compensation for destroyed rice fields and new homes on their ancestral land.

Both villages were flooded following the inauguration of the China-backed Lower Sesan II Dam in September. While some accepted relocation packages, many refused to leave their ancestral homes, simply moving to the outskirts of town when the villages flooded.

In Kbal Romeas, villagers demanded compensation for their flooded rice fields at $3,000 per hectare, totalling $531,000, and official registration of a community forest.

Yun Lorang, coordinator for the Cambodia Indigenous People’s Association, attended the meeting on Tuesday. Lorang said the villagers estimated 177 hectares of rice fields had been flooded. They also requested whatever remains of the 8,000-hectare forest be officially registered as a community forest.

“The community’s [first] priority is to register the collective forest, while the reparation is the next priority,” Lorang said.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/s ... tion-flood

Sesan dam victims ‘to be given new facilities’
1 June 2018
The Stung Treng provinical governor has pledged to build facilities for the remaining Banong ethnic villagers who were affected by flooding caused by the controversial Lower Sesan II Dam.

Two weeks after eight villagers representing 52 familes in Kbal Romeas village filed a letter seeking a solution, Governor Mom Saroeun visited the villagers on Thursday and promised that authorities and the Hydropower Lower Sesan II Company will build facilities to replace those damaged.

Broch Rithy, who was present at the meeting, said the promise is a response to their requests to build a classroom, health centre, pagoda, pond and a 13km road to the village.

However, he said the villagers were suspicious of the governor’s promise as he had only made them verbally, and without anything in writing.

“The provincial governor talked to us directly this time. He said he will find a solution for us, but we don’t trust him yet. If it is true, he should have given us a letter in writing with his thumbprint on it. We want the authorities to build the faicilities soon,” Rithy said.

He said the governor also promised to give land titles to the communal land they currently use.
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/ ... facilities

2 June 2018
In rush to electrify, Cambodia stirs the living and dead
Jared Ferrie
SREKOR, Cambodia, June 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Nat Sota worries about the spirits of her ancestors.
They have been lying in watery graves since Cambodia’s newest hydroelectric dam flooded her village of Srekor, and with it, the nearby burial ground.
“We don’t know whether they can swim or not,” she said, sitting under a wooden house on stilts near the dam’s reservoir.

Nat Sota has earthly concerns too.

Only the red roof of the village primary school is now visible above the water, and she worries for her two young grandchildren if they are unable to get an education.

She is among 62 of the village’s ethnic Kreung, Bunong and Lao minority families who have refused the government’s offer to move them to a newly-built village.

Instead they have decamped to a settlement near the reservoir that flooded their homes, and are now stuck in limbo.

They say the government’s proposed site to is too far from the Sesan River, where their people have fished for generations, and the cash offer not enough to cover the loss of property and crops.

The plight of this community in a remote corner of northern Stung Treng province highlights the human cost of Cambodia’s push to bring power to the entire country.

“By 2020, all villages have to have access to the electricity supply,” said Victor Jona, a spokesman for the department of energy at the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

The Southeast Asian nation is well on its way, according to World Bank statistics. In 2000, only 16 percent of Cambodians had access to electricity. That increased to 31 percent by 2010, and almost half the population was connected to the grid by 2016.

Much of that progress has been driven by dams. Between 2010 and 2014, hydropower’s contribution to the energy mix jumped from 3 to 61 percent, the World Bank said.

Cambodia is considering two new dams, both of which would dwarf the Lower Sesan 2 in terms of size and output, as well as the impact on land and fisheries.

The government has provided fair compensation to those who had to make way for seven dams built so far, Jona said, citing the Lower Sesan 2 as a “good example.”
He noted that most of the 860 families in villages affected by the dam have relocated to new sites, where authorities have built schools and health centres, as well as providing houses and farmland. [But] “Some people are not happy with the compensation,” he conceded.

In a letter to provincial authorities, the 62 families holding out in Srekor asked the government to recognise their new settlement as an “indigenous community” with rights to the land.

The government should provide cash compensation for their lost homes and crops, they said, and build infrastructure including a well, school and a health centre...
https://uk.reuters.com/article/cambodia ... KL5N1SO2L2
(Reporting by Jared Ferrie; editing by Lyndsay Griffiths; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights, resilience and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)

Bunong families claim Lower Sesan II dam is causing water shortage
Publication date 04 December 2018 | 08:14 ICT

More than 100 families, including Bunong ethnic community members who have been impacted by the Lower Sesan II dam in Stung Treng province, complained on Monday about the shortage of clean water.

The villagers, who have rejected compensation for relocation and currently live on higher ground about 5km from their now-flooded villages in Sesan district’s Kbal Romeas commune, said a pond dug by the provincial authority in the area has not produced any water.

Srang Lanh, a representative of the families, told The Post on Monday that water in the dam’s reservoir is not clean enough for consumption. He said the water is smelly and could be harmful to villagers’ health, while rainwater has also run out.

“The provincial authority is digging a pond at the Tuol Sre Veng area where the villagers are residing, but it has not produced any water yet. We are worried about that,” he said.

Another villager, Khem Chamroeun, said the villagers currently rely on water from a well on an old rice field about 1km from their makeshift homes. But he said the well cannot supply enough water for the more than 100 families.
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/ ... r-shortage

A Sesan Dam 2 company official refutes accusations that indigenous people living on the dam site got a raw deal by the developers.

November 4, 2019
Hydropower company says helping locals is a priority

A hydropower company says it is placing a strong emphasis on the economic, environmental and social sustainability of the communities that are an integral part of its latest project.

That’s the view of Cai Kai Ming, a senior official at Hydro Power Lower Sesan 2 Co Ltd, the developers of the Lower Sesan 2 hydropower project on the Se San River in Stung Treng province.

He says it is in his company’s best interests to contribute to the sustainability of those communities, ensuring that their way of life, culture, heritage and future is a key element of its long term strategy. He says that the company aims to be one with the community among whom they operate.

Mr Cai said the company is aware that various accusations have been levelled at it from various quarters.

“It was just open season to bash us even before our first equipment arrived at the site. Key amongst this was the concern that the indigenous people who resided within the hydropower production and dam area would be displaced or even completely wiped out.

“This is far from the truth because we took care to preserve as much as possible of the indigenous people’s surroundings, the flora and fauna. We concede that their homes were affected because they were located within the construction area,” he said.

However, added Mr Cai, the company did not ignore the plight of these people and even while the project was under construction, embarked on serious cohesive and concerted efforts to address these issues and strove hard to find amicable and acceptable solutions to these issues.

Hydro Power Lower Sesan 2 Co Ltd, working together with various authorities, soon embarked on a plan to address the concerns of the inhabitants of Sre Kor Village who had to be relocated because the dam’s catchment area would otherwise drown them and their belongings.“They were not forcibly evacuated. We had lengthy meetings and discussions with the people, recognising that they were the first inhabitants and we, as developers, were guests on their land.

“Although the discussions were long and arduous – allegations of the project bringing destruction to their way of life, damaging fish populations, polluting the water and rendering available farmland as wasteland, were hard issues to tackle, but we did, one at a time.

“We have undertaken various programmes and scientifically proven methods to assure the inhabitants that the water would not be polluted, the fish population would not shrink because we built special slipways for fish to pass through. We restored much of the flora in that area and continue to do our best to ensure their new living environment resembled their old one as much as possible,” he said.
Full article: https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50656837/h ... -priority/